Hope Triumphant IV: Keeper
by Parda
Summary: On a new planet, Methos and Cassandra set out to begin again, but the Game haunts them all. (Sequel to Hope Triumphant III: Anamchara) (This story morphed on me, so I renamed it from Mother to Keeper)
1. Prologue - The End

**_Cassandra and the Sisterhood  
_**

**Hope Triumphant IV: KEEPER**

by Parda (February 2015)

* * *

**_Prologue - THE END_**

**_So you speak to me of sadness_ **

* * *

**Starday, Spring 3, Year 555 PE**  
**Sunearth School, Terra**

* * *

"MacLeod is dead."

The words dropped from Methos's lips and echoed in the chamber at the top of the stone tower, ripples of sound vanishing to silence, leaving nothing. Cassandra had heard those same three words from Methos before, more than six centuries ago, in another chamber, on another continent, in another life.

He had been wrong then. But this time the words were inescapably true, for he went on, "I buried Dunc—"

"Stop," she said to the vidscreen. Methos's face froze, his mouth slightly open, his neatly braided hair lying over his left shoulder and showing dark against the aqua of his embroidered tunic. His gold-flecked eyes were immensely weary, sad, and old. For once his expression was unguarded, stripped bare by pain and haunted by memory. She looked at his image until it dissolved into blackness.

Cassandra stared at the vacant screen and felt nothing, only a frozen aching sorrow. The first time she had heard those words, she had lain on the floor in anguish and despair, and she had wept. This time, she could not even cry. She had no tears left to give.

Cassandra rose from her desk and went to look out the east window at the garden of remembrance and the grove of flame-trees just beyond. She had helped to plant that garden and that grove five hundred years ago, when the Sisterhood had started this school in eastern Africa.

The trees were beautiful, now at the beginning of spring, but it did not matter.

Duncan MacLeod was dead.

* * *

Connor came to see her, as she had known he would. His hair was long now, as it had been when she had first met him, though he wore it in a simple braid down his back instead of loose. He was dressed in the style of the planet Caledonia—a shimmering blue and gray sleeveless vest over dark gray trousers, supple leather boots trimmed with whale-fur, a cape that fell in a swirls of blue and white from shoulder to hip, his sword at his side. The style and the colors suited him, but he looked tired, and somehow older.

She did not speak, but led him directly to her bed. The joining was fierce and desperate, a futile effort to fill the emptiness. Afterwards, she held him in her arms and wept the tears he would not shed, wept the tears that had come back to her. The sorrow had thawed now, flooding through her, drowning her.

It was four days before Connor spoke of Duncan, and even then, Connor did not mention his dead kinsman's name.

"I always thought I would die first." Connor's voice was hoarse, an unused voice. His back was straight and his head unbowed as he stared into the courtyard below. His eyes were haunted. It was the thought of every parent, every teacher—the elder dies first.

With Immortals, the difference in ages might be centuries or millennia. With Connor and Duncan, the difference had been only seventy-four years, but Connor had found Duncan as an abandoned infant and held him in his arms. Connor had loved Duncan as a student and a son, a brother and a friend, for over a thousand years. Now Duncan was dead, and Connor was alive—and alone.

Cassandra was more than four thousand years old, and she had long ceased wondering, or even thinking, about the order of death. She and Methos were the oldest Immortals left now. Fewer than a hundred remained. So many had fallen in the Game, their quickenings stripped from their headless bodies and consumed by their killers, all in an effort to win the ultimate Prize. For it was said that the last immortal alive would have the power of all the quickenings of all the immortals down through the ages, enough power to rule the universe forever. And that was a Prize worth killing for.

So it was said.

Cassandra joined Connor at the western window. The summer sun rode high in the sky, and the dew collectors had folded themselves until nightfall. Grids of solar collectors glinted on rooftops and in distant fields, like shining coins sewn on a garment of many colors. The gongs were struck, and the central courtyard below filled with chattering, laughing girls, dismissed from morning classes and on their way to the mid-day meal.

"Quite a crowd," Connor observed.

"Nearly six hundred," she told him then followed up on his rare show of interest by adding, "We have nearly two thousand schools. Most are on Earth, but we're committed to having at least one school on each of the twenty-two inhabited worlds, and that effort is going well." Cassandra thought that her first teacher and mentor, the Lady of the Temple, would have been pleased.

Connor didn't respond.

Cassandra decided to move from numerical to personal. "That girl with dark hair, who's hanging from the tree branch near the fountain, is your wife Alex's descendant, about twenty-five generations removed. Her name is Mikil."

Connor peered more closely at the girl on the tree. "Descended from Colin or Sara?"

"Both, in several different lines. Mikil's also descended from all three of Colin and Sara's half-siblings." A man named Edgerton had fathered those five ancestors of Mikil, since Connor, like all immortals, was sterile. When he and Alex had used artificial insemination to have children, they hadn't realized that the anonymous sperm donor's family had a history of psychic abilities.

When Colin and Sara had begun having prophetic dreams as teenagers, Cassandra had sought out their kin. With the Edgerton line and other genetic lines from around the world, she had begun the slow revitalization of humanity's innate gifts, trying to restore what Roland had nearly eradicated during millennia of pogroms and persecutions and witch-killings. Most of the billion people on Earth carried the talent now, though it was often latent or minimal.

"Mikil's talent will be dormant until puberty, right?" Connor asked. "That gene fix worked?"

"Yes," Cassandra confirmed. "The delay has bred true for fifteen generations."

"Good."

She waited, but he didn't ask what talents Mikil's parents or grandparents had shown or reminisce about the different talents of Colin and Sara and their children and grandchildren. Connor was back to staring out the window, silent once again.

A gong was struck, and then the girls were gone.

* * *

Three more days, and then just before daybreak Connor spoke of the death again. "Amanda told me. She—" He left the bed abruptly and went to stand in front of the window, staring into the pearl-gray fog.

Cassandra went to stand beside him, pulling her fur-lined robe close about her. The chamber was chilly, for nights were always cold in the highlands. From outside came the distant yet still-piercing warble of a barbican, welcoming the dawn. "How did Amanda hear?" Cassandra asked.

"She said Methos came and told her."

Cassandra knew, without being told, that Amanda and Methos had gone to bed together and tried to console each other, in the same way as she herself and Connor had done. And she knew that it had not worked for them, either. There could be no consolation. Duncan was dead.

"But the duel hadn't been registered with the Tribunal," Connor continued, "and so they didn't know who, just that…" He cleared his throat then shook his head impatiently. "How did you hear?"

"Methos sent me a message." Cassandra did not want to mention this next item, but she would not hide anything from Connor. Never again. "Last month, he also sent a report for the Chronicles."

Connor seized on that, as she had known he would, a starving wolf anxious to kill. "What does it say?"

"I don't know. I didn't open it."

Connor stared in disbelief. "You didn't—?"

Cassandra shrugged. What difference did it make, really, who had killed Duncan? He was dead.

It made a difference to Connor. The wolf was intent on the hunt. "Where's the report?" Connor demanded.

She did not want to watch. She handed the vidchip to Connor and left the chamber.

He came to her an hour later in the garden, as she was harvesting new leaves from the nettles. She knew Connor had merely been biding his time with her, letting the grief subside to a manageable level before he began the hunt.

Now he was ready to kill. "Ever hear of Lis na Trag, from Marsopolis?" he demanded.

Cassandra nodded. "Of course. The hero of the Mars Revolution, four hundred years ago." She dropped another handful of leaves into her gathering sack.

"He's not a hero anymore," Connor nearly snarled.

"I know," she said. She received copies of all the reports from both the Watchers and the Tribunal, and she added them to the Chronicles that spanned nearly four thousand years. Trag had followed a common trajectory for soldiers without a country of their own, going from heroic revolutionary to freedom fighter to mercenary for hire. He'd smuggled guns, first from necessity and then for profit. He'd dealt in black-market goods and drugs and—this last century—slaves.

He also liked to play the Game: the ultimate test for a warrior. He and Duncan had fought to the death, and Trag had won. It was the luck of the draw. The roll of the dice. The fall of a head. The Game.

It did not matter. Duncan was dead.

Cassandra moved to another plant. The cordate leaves marched up the stalk in alternating pairs, a fragile ladder of dark green hearts. She grasped a leaf firmly, flattening its spiny under-hairs into harmlessness.

"I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon, on the first ship off-planet," Connor told her.

Cassandra paused, the leaf cool with morning dew under her fingers. She did not let go. She'd indulged in avoidance and denial long enough. She pulled the leaf with a quick tug, set it in her sack, then turned to face Connor. "Killing Trag won't bring Duncan back."

"Nothing will bring Duncan back." Connor's voice was rough with grief and rage. "Nothing."

Exactly her point. "Then why fight?" she asked him.

"To finish what Duncan started. Trag can't be permitted to win the Prize."

"If Trag is that evil, report him to the Tribunal. Let them—"

"You know the Tribunal will do nothing without overwhelming evidence," Connor broke in. "And Trag is careful."

"And you want his head."

"Yes, I do," Connor agreed instantly, and his eyes were those of a killer: flat, deadly, and cold … a man she knew much better than she wanted to. He turned on his heel and walked away.

Cassandra finished gathering the nettles then took the leaves to the cooks in the kitchen. "We'll have nettle soup today," one of them said happily. Cassandra nodded, but she did not stay for the meal.

Late in the afternoon, in the garden of remembrance, she tried again, but Connor didn't look up from sharpening his sword. "Just because you don't believe in the Prize," he said, looking down the length of the straight blade, "doesn't mean that it's not real."

And just because he did believe in the Prize, didn't mean that it was. Cassandra didn't say that; she knew it wouldn't help. They'd had this conversation before. She sat down near him on the stone bench.

He tilted the weapon, its golden surface gleaming in the sun, then sent to work polishing away a scratch invisible to her eyes. He'd forged this sword as a replacement for the Japanese katana he'd lost in a Scottish loch six hundred years ago, and it had served him well. He'd killed more than a hundred people with it, all according to the rules of the Game.

"Neither of us has proof of the Prize either way," she pointed out. "You're taking its existence on faith."

"As did my teacher," Connor replied evenly. "Ramirez believed."

"Because his teacher told him." She tried not to sigh. "As his teacher had told him, no doubt."

"No," Connor corrected. "Ramirez told me his teacher found out about the Game when someone tried to take his head."

Cassandra had first heard about the Game from a Wurusemu, a terrified Hittite woman who'd pleaded with Cassandra to leave her alone. Cassandra had soothed Wurusemu then listened incredulously to her tales of being hounded by a man who wanted her head instead of her body, all in pursuit of some "prize." Cassandra had befriended Wurusemu, and they'd traveled together for a time. Until the night Cassandra woke to find Wurusemu trying to kill her in order to win the Prize for herself.

There had been no escape from the Game since then, thirty-six hundred years ago. Whether the Prize existed or not, the Game was all too real, and it would go on as long as immortals continued to play.

Cassandra did not want to argue with Connor, not now. She sat with him while he sharpened his blade, then together they watched the sun set and darkness settle over the land. That night, she sang to Connor in bed, as she always did before he left, a song of words and hands, of touches and music, of love.

* * *

That dawn, she woke to the warbling call of the barbican, and the warmth of Connor close behind her. His legs were intertwined with hers; his arm between her breasts held her tight to him, and their hands was clasped together. She nestled closer and kissed his hand, and Connor murmured and pulled her to him, caught and floating between asleep and awake.

Cassandra lay on her side and watched the sunrise, the black etched line of the horizon, the shredded clouds of pink and orange and crimson in the sky, and then – suddenly – a crescent of silvered molten fire engulfing one black hill.

"What do you see?" Connor asked quietly, awake now, his voice soft at the back of her neck. "There, in the sky?"

She shook her head, not wanting to answer, knowing she could not lie. "I see—you," she said finally. The visions came to her less frequently now, but fire still brought images of blood … and death.

A silence, and a sigh, then he said, "Should I ask?"

"No." Cassandra did not wish him to know. Her visions were often misleading, and she had been wrong before.

She turned in his arms and kissed him, long and hard, fierce and desperate. "Make love to me, Connor," she asked, tracing the edge of his cheek with her fingertips, the stubble there rough beneath her hand. "Before you go."

"Aye, love," he answered in the Gaelic, the language of the land of his birth. "I will." He took her hand to his lips and kissed it. "I want to." Then he kissed her, just as fierce, just as desperate. "I need to."

And he did.

* * *

"Connor," she said, later that morning, when the sun was high and the girls were chattering on their way to class, "Don't do this."

He did not turn from the window. "I don't have a choice."

He did have a choice, but it was not a choice he was willing to make. She knew she could not persuade him otherwise. She kissed him again, soft and sweet, but she did not watch him go.

* * *

One year later, just after the Midsummer celebrations and while the flame-trees were once again heavy with fruit, Methos arrived.

He had traveled on the space-freighter from Vega IV, a regular run in the sector. Methos wore a simple black jumpsuit of some shiny synthetic material. His face was calm now, the pain hidden behind one of his many masks, but the stark color of his clothing left his eyes gray and flat. They were still weary, still old, but no sadder. They could not possibly become sadder.

She knew why he had come, and she did not want to know. Yet there was no escape from the truth.

Nor could she send him away, given what she had learned just this last year. Methos was the key to it all, both the beginning and the end.

She would make certain of that.

Cassandra offered him coffee, a welcome-home drink, for he had been away from Earth for centuries, and coffee carried the taste of the land in which it grew. They sat upon cushions at a low table, sipping the coffee in her stone chamber, silent while her harp sang in the wind. It was as much a ceremony as the Japanese tea ceremony, and for this last brief moment of peace she was willing to wait, to savor the taste of the beverage, to listen to the wind, to simply be.

Methos finally set down his cup, and then he spoke, three simple words. The last time she had heard those words, her heart had frozen. This time, her heart broke.

"MacLeod is dead."

* * *

**_\- continued in chapter 2 "The Game"  
_**

_Connor's children Sara and Colin appear in my stories Goddess Child, The Only Game in Town, Hope Triumphant II-Sister, and Hope Triumphant III-Anamchara._


	2. 1a The Game: it seems to never end

_**THE GAME**_

_**It seems to never end**_

* * *

**Seaday, Summer 6, Year 556 PE**  
**Sunearth School**

* * *

When Methos told Cassandra the news about Connor, she had closed her eyes. When she'd opened them again, he'd seen an emptiness of pain. So Methos had left her alone.

Later that day, Cassandra approached him as he was leaving behind the chatter of students and the clatter of dishes in the school's dining hall. He had not seen her there during the evening meal.

"Thank you," she told him, her words as warm as the fleeting (and surprising) touch of her fingers upon the back of his hand. "For coming in person all this way to tell me about Connor. I appreciate your thoughtfulness."

Methos was always thoughtful. He'd been thinking a lot lately, and not just about Cassandra. She wasn't the only reason he'd come all the way back to Earth, though she didn't need to know that. So he simply bowed his head in silent acknowledgement of her gratitude.

"It helps, I think," she said, sounding as detached as a clinical observer, a coping technique that Methos recognized well. "The personal connection. Last summer I went to Argentina to tell Elena about Duncan."

Elena, Methos knew, was not detached about anything ever, certainly not the death of her long-time lover. "Did she cry first?" Methos asked. "Or swear?"

Cassandra nearly smiled. "Both at the same time. After I finally convinced her it was true. Then she drank, and went riding, and drank, and swore and wept again. Then she slept."

Methos nodded. It all sounded depressingly familiar. A gaggle of girls exited the dining hall, and as they went by, he and Cassandra flattened themselves against the wall

"Elena's married right now," Cassandra went on. "Another mortal. They're raising two young boys. That helps. To stay busy."

"Yes." He needed a project, or maybe a dog. He wasn't ready for a lover or a family. He and Duncan had raised three children over the years. They were all gone now, having lived long and mostly happy lives. Methos was glad he didn't have to tell any of them that their father Duncan was dead.

Cassandra had been keeping busy with the schools and the psychic breeding program and remaking the calendar and a multitude of other plans to change the worlds. But even she might take a sabbatical now and then. "Did you and Connor ever raise children together?" Methos asked.

She watched a solitary girl of about six years push open the heavy door and leave the building before saying, "No." Then she nodded politely and pushed open that same door.

Methos decided to give Cassandra a nine-day before he tried to talk to her again. He busied himself by reading the Chronicles, going for long hikes and riding horses, and watching the stars. In all these long years, the constellations had barely changed. He liked that.

When he was at the school, he watched the girls. They seemed very serious. He talked to the teachers. They were even more serious, but many of them were also very interesting … and interested. There were men at the school, but not enough. Not an unpleasant visit, all in all.

On the next Turnday, when businesses were closed and houses of worship were open, he finally climbed the stairs to Cassandra's room at the top of the south-eastern tower. She kept it sparse: a large bed with curtains drawn all around, the round table in the center where they had sat on floor cushions and shared coffee, a desk with a single shelf built above. Her strung loom created a spiderwork of shadows on the floor, and her harp whispered and hummed to itself in the corner, caressed by the wind. The thick stone walls were pierced by four windows, one in each compass direction. They were open to the air today.

She was staring to the east at the trees, and she spoke without once looking his way. "I keep thinking: Not him. Not Duncan. Not Connor." Her voice caught a little on the names. "And then I think, why not him? They didn't have any magic protection. They weren't that special."

Methos cleared his throat before saying, "They were special to us."

"Yes. Yes, they were." She finally turned to look at him. "Are you sure that…?"

"Two Immortals go in a building. There's a Quickening. One Immortal comes out." Methos shrugged. "The duel was registered with the Tribunal and agreed to by both principals. The Watcher report was filed in Spring. Didn't you get it?"

"I haven't been reading them lately," she said, turning away again. "Not since Connor killed Lis Na Trag two seasons ago."

"It was Trag's teacher, Phan Huy," Methos told her, but she didn't seem to care. So he didn't tell her that almost a year ago he'd offered Duncan's katana to Connor, not just for the duel with Duncan's killer but to keep. Connor had thanked him (which surprised Methos) but refused (which didn't). In duels to the death, a man wanted his own sword.

Though that obviously hadn't been enough for Connor's fight with Phan Huy.

"And so it goes," Cassandra said, and the triteness of the words could not hide their bitterness. "On and on and on."

Methos watched as Cassandra hugged her arms tightly around herself. She was also rocking to and fro in distress, just a little, but the tip of her waist-length braid betrayed her by its movement. The color of her black hair ribbon matched her clothes. Over black shirt and slacks she wore a knee-length gray and white robe, trimmed in more black ribbon and slit on either side past the hip.

Not all of the Sisterhood dressed like nuns, but Cassandra often opted for simplicity and comfort instead of fashion. Methos wondered what colors she wore when she wasn't in mourning. He was still in black, too. He hadn't planned that. He just hadn't bothered to pick out new clothes.

"I should be used to it by now," Cassandra said. "I knew it was just a matter of time. Duncan and Connor kept fighting, kept looking for battles. The odds had to catch up with them."

"Yeah," Methos muttered. He'd thought much the same.

"Not us," she said, with a laugh as brittle and cold as ice. "We old ones know better."

Knowing better made it worse. Being "an old one" didn't help, either. Methos went to the southern window. The entry courtyard lay below him, and the local people came and went from the health clinic and lingered to gossip at the fountain. The Sisterhood provided health care and water free of charge. In the distance, a flat-topped mountain rose, its missing peaks surrounded by clouds. Two extinct volcanoes stood on either side of a dormant one, an ancient geological formation. A home of extinct gods.

"How many battles have you fought in the last thousand years, Methos?" Cassandra asked from behind him.

She sounded casual, but that was never a casual question among their kind. He answered anyway. "Seven." He thought about it. "No, eight."

"The MacLeods would fight that many in decade. In a year."

"Not lately. We're getting harder to find."

"That we are," she agreed. "Do you know how many Immortals are left?"

"Ninety-one."

"Ninety-one," Cassandra said softly, and he heard her draw a long, slow breath. "It was the Prize, you know," she said, now sounding brisk and matter-of-fact. "That was why Connor fought. He wanted to make sure the wrong Immortal didn't get the Prize."

When Methos heard her move toward him, he turned to keep her in sight.

She stopped, close to the round table in the center of the room. "Do you worry about that, Methos?" she asked. "About who will win the Prize?"

"Why should I?" he asked, leaning against the wall. The cold from the stone seeped into his shoulder. "If I don't win it, then I won't be here to see what's it like."

She almost smiled before observing sardonically, "Always the pragmatist."

He tossed her own words back at her: "We old ones know better."

She nodded, acknowledging his point. But then she asked: "Do you believe in the Prize, Methos?"

Methos dodged in the simplest way possible. "What?" he asked, as if he hadn't heard.

"Do you believe in the Prize?" she repeated. Her eyes were golden green. "Do you believe that the last Immortal will have power enough to rule the universe?"

A shrug was his answer, but it was not enough to satisfy Cassandra.

"When was the first time you heard about it?" she asked next.

"I don't remember," he said, straightening up and looking out the window again.

"Before the Horsemen?" she persisted. "Or after?"

He didn't answer that, either, and she came to his window, standing at his side, looking out at the same view. "Just before the Trojan War started," Cassandra began, studiedly casual again, "I saw Roland take his first head."

Methos had never liked Roland, not from the moment Kronos had brought the curly-headed youngster into the Horseman camp nearly four thousand years ago. Roland had been arrogant, pompous, insecure … and boring. Not to mention sadistic and twisted. As Cassandra knew full well. Good thing Duncan had killed him.

"Roland was as surprised as I was by the quickening," Cassandra was saying. "None of us knew that could happen, or that we could die by beheading, not even the Lady of the Temple, and she was nine hundred years old." Cassandra touched her necklace, a triple crescent of silver, her reminder of her priestess days. "When the lightning started, I ran."

In his early days, Methos had sought the lightning. Later, he ran from it. It didn't matter. The lightning stalked them all.

"Soon after," she said, "I realized that the Horsemen must have known about beheadings and quickenings."

"Yes," he admitted. "But you never saw one at our camp."

"All four of you practiced on mortals." Her mouth twisted in distaste. "Frequently."

True enough.

"Yet you never told Roland," Cassandra observed.

"Tell him how to kill us?" Methos asked with exaggerated incredulity. "No, of course not."

Cassandra was looking out the window again. "And you certainly never told me."

Of course not. But Methos didn't say it; Cassandra wouldn't appreciate the humor just now. So he settled for: "Knowledge is power."

"Very true," she murmured and then she turned to look him in the eye. "And I know that the Horsemen invented the Prize, Methos."

She was guessing, at best. She certainly couldn't prove it. So he could deny it, protest his innocence, tell her she was mistaken or crazy, spin some other tale of days gone by. But what was the point of that anymore? What was the point of any of it? "Yes," he admitted, as he had once admitted other sins to Duncan. Oh yes. The word "yes" had been hot and bitter then, scalding with rage and desperation. Now the word tasted like lead, dull and heavy and cold on his tongue. "We did."

Cassandra showed no triumph, no surprise, just a weariness that equaled his own."Why?" she asked plaintively. "Why would you start the Game?"

"We started _a _game," he corrected sharply. "Other people turned it into _The _Game. And I couldn't stop it." He drew a ragged breath, scraped raw between bitter laughter and even more bitter tears. "I have tried."

He didn't want to look at her anymore, or to have her look at him with those knowing eyes. Methos turned and left the chamber. He walked down the long curving stairway that clung to the stone wall, three flights down to the ground, then went outside into the heat of the day.

The fierce sunshine left him blind.

* * *

Cassandra hadn't expected Methos to admit so quickly or so easily to starting the Game. But she knew well enough that after centuries of telling lies, telling the truth held a dark and reckless allure.

Perhaps he was ready to tell more. She left her chamber and went in search of him. She could tell that Methos had been seeking open air, not cover, so she didn't bother to check the inner courtyard or inside the buildings. She went to the entry courtyard, a large square edged by the Sexuality and Healing Hall to the west, the Hall of Learning to the north, and the Temples of Birth and Rebirth in the east. The space was busy with people gossiping at the fountain, enjoying the day of worship and rest. Cassandra searched the crowd but didn't see Methos. Her inquiries led her to the walkway between the temples, and she passed through that leafy tunnel to reach the sunny garden beyond.

The garden of remembrance was bright with flowers, soft with the patter of a small fountain and the chimes of the soul-catchers hanging from the trees. Two young women in the green robes of novices scattered the ashes of the dead around the roots of a plum tree, and the cold scent lay dusty above the redolence of living green.

Methos was just outside the garden, sitting cross-legged on the ground under the flame trees and making aimless patterns in the scattered leaves. Cassandra sat beside him, but not near.

"You're not angry?" he asked, his head down.

"I was," she admitted. "I even threw things. But it began long ago, and I know you don't play the Game now."

"I never have." He scooped up a handful of dirt and cradled it in his palm. "How long have you known?"

"I put the pieces together just this last year. Connor mentioned that Ramirez's teacher, Tjanefer, had first heard of the Game when he was challenged to a duel. Ramirez had told me other stories, including one in which Tjanefer had been challenged by a large man who carried an axe … and called another immortal 'Brother'."

Cassandra watched Methos carefully, but all he did was to slowly tilt his hand. The dirt began to fall, piling up into a tiny hill. "That fight happened about a century after Troy fell," she continued. "It was interrupted, so Tjanefer survived. He told other immortals—including all his students—of the Game and the Prize. Ramirez told all his students, and Connor told his, and Duncan told his. And all of them believed."

"Viral messages are tricky little buggers," Methos observed. His palm was empty, and he demolished the hill of dirt with a vicious sweep of his hand. "They mutate. They can kill."

"Living things are not ours to control, even if we create them," she pointed out. "Ask Dr. Frankenstein. Or any parent."

"Then I should ask you," he retorted, sharp and wounding, using attack as a mode of defense. "How many people did Roland kill?"

"Probably not so many as Kronos," she snapped back. But such pettiness was not helpful. "They killed too many," she said softly. "And sometimes, what we start becomes something we never wanted. And even though you and I are not directly responsible, still we feel guilty."

"Not I," Methos told her, standing and brushing off the dirt. "I gave up guilt fifteen hundred years ago."

She stood and faced him. "We old ones know better," she repeated. "Because the final piece to the puzzle, Methos, was the guilt in your eyes when you told me that Duncan was dead."

At those three final words, Methos's mask splintered, revealing furrows of pain and the guilt that still haunted his eyes. He walked away again.

She called after him, "Don't you remember how it was to live without the Game?"

He didn't pause or turn. "No."

She caught up to him, and when Methos didn't stop walking, she took hold of his sleeve and stopped them both. He glared at her hand and then at her, but Cassandra didn't let go. She knew Methos wasn't going to take her head, and she wasn't letting him get away now. This was too important to abandon.

"Duncan died for nothing," she reminded Methos. Connor had died for nothing. Ramirez had died for nothing. She loathed this viciously wasteful "game" that had been created by vicious and wasteful men. So many people had died, and all for nothing.

But then, Death had always been the reason, just by itself. "Nothing," Cassandra said again, in a whisper this time.

"I know." Methos had his mask back in place, but his voice was raw.

"We can not let this go on," she insisted. "There aren't many of us left. We have to tell people."

"They won't believe you, Cassandra."

"I'll use the Voice to convince them." Ending the Game was definitely a matter of life and death.

"It won't be enough," Methos said flatly.

"Then you tell them, too," she urged. "If both of us—"

"No!" he said, grabbing her by the upper arms, his fingers digging into her flesh.

He had held her this way ages ago, when she had been his slave. She didn't resist, anymore than she had then, but she wasn't afraid of him now. She just let him have his say.

"You're - not - listening," Methos told her, shaking her back and forth, frustration slicing each word sharp and clean. "And they won't listen either."

"We have to try," she repeated. She stayed soft and pliable under his grip, but she was determined to end the Game, and she needed Methos's help to do it. So she told him what he already knew but didn't want to hear: "Duncan would have wanted us to."

Methos let go of her then, dropped his hands and turned away.

This time, she let him go.

* * *

_**Continued in "a prayer to non-believers"**_

* * *

Details about how the Game started are in my story _Just a Game_ (co-written with Nightsky), which is also on fanfiction . net.

The character Elena was created by Vi Moreau and appears in the stories _Hope Remembered III-Confidante, Hope Triumphant II-Sister, Invisible Darkness, The Only Game in Town, _and_ Elena's Journey,_ plus many more stories by Vi.


	3. 1b The Game: prayer to nonbelievers

_**a prayer to non-believers** _

* * *

**Turnday, Summer 7, 556 PE**

* * *

Methos left the garden. He walked away from Cassandra and her maddeningly idealistic insistence. She didn't follow, not now, but he knew she hadn't given up. She held stubbornness in high esteem. So Methos kept walking, all that day.

As night fell, he stepped off the path into a grove of tall trees, silvery in the fading light, then made his way through a clearing toward a coffee tree in flower. He gathered leaves to make a bed beneath the fragrant blossoms then quickly fell asleep. He slept under the stars, as he and Duncan had done on many different worlds. His dreams were of Duncan and firelight and laughter, of silvered swords and blood. Methos woke at dawn, cold and alone, to the taste of ashes and tears.

Duncan MacLeod was dead.

Methos sat up but curled in on himself, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, breathing slowly. Cassandra was right, he knew. Duncan would have wanted to try to stop the Game, and he would have expected—demanded—that Methos help.

Duncan would also have gotten up to meet the other immortal whom Methos was just now sensing nearby. But Methos preferred his privacy, so he stayed where he was, mostly hidden by low-hanging branches. He took out his stungun and waited, silent and alert, hoping the other immortal was as shy as he was.

Unfortunately, the sense of an immortal grew stronger instead of weaker. Voices sounded, the words indistinct, then footsteps crunched dry leaves, getting closer, coming into the clearing. Then swords were drawn.

With exasperated deliberation, Methos beat his head against his knee and silently cursed the goddess of fortune and all three Fates. How, in the names of Laplace, Legrange, and Poisson, had he managed to select an immortal dueling ground as his bivouac? And why did swordfighting have to be so damnably loud?

He put his hands over his ears then grimly settled in to wait. He decided to leave during the quickening, when the victorious immortal—and the loser—would be in no condition to notice anything. From what Methos could see through the leaves, the fight shouldn't take long.

The bearded immortal seemed untouched, walking in a circle around his prey. The other immortal, who looked to be in his early twenties, was holding one bloody arm close against his side as he pivoted to face his opponent. From the knee down, his right leg looked like it had been dipped in red paint. Each breath was an agonizing wheeze, and his lips and nose were bloody too. Probably a punctured lung.

"You are going to die today, Tinashe," the bearded one announced.

"Perhaps, Ruten," Tinashe managed to say.

"Definitely," Ruten corrected. "Tell me, shall I tell your wife how you died before I rape her?" he asked pleasantly. "Or after?" He grinned, revealing dingy teeth amidst dark hair. "Or during?"

Tinashe didn't answer or respond, even when Ruten began to describe in crude and graphic detail what he was planning to do to the wife. Every so often, in the midst of a sentence, their blades would clash, and after a brief exchange, Ruten would dance back and Tinashe would sport another wound. Yet his expression remained stern and unyielding, he was on his feet, and his sword was in his hand.

Tinashe was a brave young man. An honorable player of the Game. Which meant, of course, that he was going to be dead very soon.

It wasn't Methos's problem or his concern. Immortals fought one on one, and Watchers never interfered. Those were the rules. So said the Watcher handbook. So said the Game, that bloody stupid hydra of an idea.

The blades clashed again, and this time Tinashe cried out in pain. He had stumbled to his knees and was desperately trying to hold his sword up to block the fatal blow. But Ruten was taking his time, stabbing at Tinashe with the point of his blade and laughing in evil glee.

Methos decided he didn't like Ruten. He didn't like the Game, either. So why should he play by the rules? Why should he watch another young one die? He steadied his hand on his knee, took aim with his stungun, and shot Ruten. The man crumpled to the ground.

Tinashe struggled to his feet, looking wildly about the clearing and trying to lift his sword. "Show yourself!" he demanded.

Methos came out, his gun still in his hand. "I've no quarrel with you," he reassured Tinashe, but the boy didn't lower his sword, so Methos didn't lower his gun. He nodded at the motionless figure on the ground. "Just with him."

"That matters not," Tinashe informed him. "Ruten and I had already joined battle. You had no right to shoot him. You cannot interfere. Do you not know the rules of the Game?"

Methos managed to restrain his irritated sigh. Not even a thank-you. "I've heard of them," he admitted.

"Then you know that you must wait until our battle is finished before you—"

"Don't you mean: 'Wait until you're dead'?" Methos broke in. "He was going to take your head."

Tinashe swallowed hard but said sturdily, "Such may be my fate, but such are the rules. We must all obey them." He stood a little straighter and declared: "You should leave."

"So should you," Methos replied, pointing out the obvious.

Tinashe shook his head. "Battle has been joined; it must be finished."

Methos was tempted to tell him: "So finish it," but he knew this paragon of honor would never chop off the head of a man who was lying unconscious on the ground. And he wouldn't walk away because of the rules of the Game. "What if I told you," Methos began, trying one last time to save Tinashe's life, "that the rules aren't valid, because there is no Prize? There never has been; there never will be. What if I told you that we're killing each for no reason at all?"

"That cannot be," Tinashe declared, simple and unshakeable. "We all know of the Game." Then his eyes narrowed and the tip of his sword came up. "But is that why you break the rules? You do not believe?"

Methos didn't care to discuss this any further. Nor did he want Tinashe to challenge him as a rule breaker. He shot Tinashe in the chest, and gave Ruten another blast so the two combatants should wake up at about the same time. Then Methos started walking as fast as he could, out into the tall grass. As he walked, he cursed in Etruscan and Polish and Cantonese, both at Tinashe for being a stubborn idiot and at himself for being a sentimental idealist. Nothing had changed, not in three thousand years. He couldn't stop the Game.

Duncan couldn't have stopped it, either. Nor could Cassandra. The Game was immortal, far more so than those who played it. It had become a religion, and its true believers enforced the usual death penalty against heretics and apostates and infidels. Rival preachers met the same unhappy fate. So Methos needed to make certain—by whatever means necessary—that Cassandra kept quiet.

He found her at the school's archery range, armed with a deadly weapon and shooting with unnerving accuracy. Her arrows pierced the target with a steady beat. She stopped long enough to direct him to the small stone lodge nearby. "You may find a bow you like in there."

He did, a plain self-bow of locust with horn tips. He picked out a dozen arrows, strapped on a wrist guard, then joined Cassandra at the shooting line. They stood side by side, and their bows rose and fell. Their arrows sang through the air, the bowstrings hummed, and the sun was warm on his back and shoulders. Methos settled into the ancient rhythm: nock, breathe, lift and draw, release. Nock, breathe, lift and draw, release. His breathing steadied; his aim improved.

When all the arrows were gone, they set down the bows and headed toward the target. Within three steps, Cassandra started nagging again. "We need to stop the Game, Methos."

He noted how she had included him in her problem-solving team. "It would be nice," he agreed, "but 'need to' does not equal 'able to'."

"Or 'willing to'?" she challenged.

"Just so," he agreed imperturbably and quickened his pace across the lawn.

At the target, they began yanking arrows out. "A report came in last night," she told him.

He pulled three arrows from the center ring before asking, "Who?"

"Kyra the Spartan." Cassandra dropped the last arrow into her quiver. "She lost her head five months ago to Handon Gris."

Methos didn't say anything as they began walking back to the shooting line.

Cassandra, of course, kept talking. "That brings our numbers to ninety."

Good to know Cassandra could do arithmetic. Methos kept walking.

"You're a mathematician," she said. "How long until we're all dead?"

He'd actually started the calculations, but he needed to know the replacement rate, and locating pre-immortals was devilishly hard. Based on what little data he had, their numbers were declining, too. "Would that be such a bad thing?" he asked, as they took up their stance at the line again. "For immortals to be extinct?"

Her fingers carefully smoothed the fletching of an arrow, aligned each barb side by side. "Perhaps not," she admitted. "But are you ready to die?"

"No." He nocked an arrow and breathed in. Then he pulled back the string as he lifted his bow, took aim, and released the arrow, all in one smooth motion. The bowstring hummed, and his arrow flew to the center of the target. "I want to live."

"So do I," she told him grimly, and her arrow thudded into the target just below his own. She shot another and another and another without speaking. Four arrows ringed the center eye before she slowly lowered her bow. "So do we all. But we won't."

"It's a big universe," he reminded her as he selected four arrows from the quiver. He nocked one and held the other three in readiness between his fingers. "Plenty of places to hide." His arrows, shot in quick succession, found the spaces left between hers.

Her next arrow splintered one of his, a Robin Hood shot made easier by the multitude of targets. "No," she declared, afire with zeal. "The Game must end." She switched from impassioned to persuasive. "We have to try, Methos, even if—"

"No," he declared in turn, grimly determined, countering her heat with brutal cold.

"But—"

"No." He went back to shooting, and he stopped only when all the arrows—his and hers—were gone.

"Methos," Cassandra said softly, and she'd switched from persuasive to sympathetic now, ready to listen instead of to demand. She laid her hand on his forearm, where his muscles were trembling with strain. Her fingertips were cool; her eyes were warm. "Tell me?" she invited.

He'd never told anyone. Ever. But he'd rather not have to kill her to keep her quiet, so he needed her to understand. "Yes," he agreed. They collected the arrows and returned the gear to the lodge, then sat on its north side in the narrow strip of shade, leaning their backs against the cool stone wall. She waited quietly, and Methos began the tale.

"After I left the Horsemen," he told her, "I began to run into people playing the Game. They wouldn't listen when I told them the Prize wasn't real. They just tried to kill me. So I killed them." That part had been easy. Too easy. Too good. Quickenings beckoned with both power and blood. He'd had to force himself to stop. "When I could, I walked away from the fight."

"As do I," she said. "When was this?"

"Rome was fighting Carthage, so one of the three Punic wars." He shrugged. "About three thousand years ago."

"And the Game had begun a thousand years before that."

The years became a blur. "I suppose. By the time Hadrian was on the throne— Where were you then?" he interrupted himself, partly because he was curious and partly to stall.

"In Ephesus," Cassandra replied promptly. "I remember because Hadrian visited the city when his temple was dedicated. We did quite a lot of business that month."

"And what business was that?"

"A brothel that catered to men who craved pain."

Methos blinked at her bluntness and at the information. Her chronicles didn't mention that.

"I had started as one of the whores," she continued blithely. "When I had enough money, I bought the place."

Instead of escaping, as any normal person would have done. "I take it you were happy to oblige their desires," Methos observed.

She smiled, hot and hungry and cruel. "Oh, I _wallowed_ in it. And I was good at it."

Methos didn't doubt it. She'd been taught the art of pain by masters.

"I renamed it the House of the Pomegranate. Once a man had tasted us, he always returned." Her hands lay quietly on her lap, the fingers interlaced to form a basket. Her face was calm now; her eyes had gone bleak. "Though the girls I bought at the slave markets to be whores never left at all."

"Have you?" Methos asked pointedly.

Cassandra stared at her hands, slowly bringing the palms together into a posture of prayer. "Yes. After killing one too many of my customers, I was driven from town and lynched."

Methos understood how a thirst for revenge and control could have started her on that bloody path. Though he hadn't thought she would go quite that far.

"I woke up in a ditch surrounded by some of my girls, who would never wake up again. That helped me to realize what I'd done," Cassandra said. "What I was." She met his eyes before admitting, "What I am."

"You told me once you didn't like to kill," her reminded her.

"I was lying. To myself as well as to you." She shifted her weight, shuddering, then settled back down. "I didn't want to be anything like you. But I have come to see that we're not that different, you and I."

They shared a smile thin with rueful pain, and he knew she had deliberately chosen to tell him her story now, right after she'd asked him to tell his. And sure enough, she turned the conversation back to him, asking briskly, "So, Methos, what were you doing when Hadrian was emperor of Rome?"

"I," Methos was pleased to be able to report, "was living a simple and virtuous life as a Christian." It had been a good religion before it had churches and money and so many rules. "I'd seen Christians in the market and the villages, and they seemed … happy," Methos said. "At peace. I wanted that. They told me that their god would forgive any sin, that I could start over, have a new life."

"And you wanted that, too."

"After the Horsemen, I needed that," he corrected. "While I was with my brothers, killing and burning and destroying meant nothing. It was just what we did. But a century after I left the Horsemen, my village was raided and my friends were killed." Methos could still remember the stink of burning hair. The screams and the butchered corpses hadn't been funny anymore.

"While I was burying the children, I finally realized: the Horsemen had murdered people in _exactly _the same way. That's what I had been." He corrected himself. "What I was." But that wasn't right, either. "What I am," he admitted, just as she had done. "And what I don't want to be."

"Yes," she agreed instantly. "I understand."

For once, that was actually true. Methos went on with his tale."Part of forgiveness is making amends, but the Horsemen had ended centuries before, and I thought you had been killed at Troy. There was no one alive to make amends to.

"So, I looked to the future instead of the past. I was baptized and took the name Adam. I was forgiven all my sins. I tried to follow the Way, to be kind and helpful, to return good for evil. I married a widow with two children, and we made ropes and sails for fishermen in a village near Corinth. We were happy, and even after she died, I stayed. I still had my children and my religious community. My home."

Methos took a deep breath. "Then Vibia came."

* * *

**a.d. VIII Id. Aprilis, the second year of the reign of the Emperor Hadrian**  
**Senatorial Province of Achaia, Empire of Rome**

* * *

"Everyone," Elder Simos called one evening just before the communal meal, "please welcome Lucius Cornelius and his mother to our congregation. They come to us from Rome."

Methos and his son and daughter joined the line of people who were greeting the newcomers with the kiss of peace and welcoming words.

Young Lucius was about seventeen, not a boy though not yet a man. His mother was a handsome matron, strongly built and with fine brown eyes. But her age was impossible to tell, even with the lines in her face and the strands of gray in her dark hair. Immortals were odd that way.

Immortals also got nervous around each other. Methos reassured her as quickly as he could. "I don't want your head," Methos murmured as he kissed her cheek.

"Nor do I want yours," she replied, just as softly. But her eyes were reserved and her stance was wary. She watched him covertly throughout the meal, the stories, and the prayers.

Her son had no such worries. He was already making plans with Methos's son to go fishing the next day. Methos's daughter, Tanquel, who was nearly sixteen, also seemed to find Lucius very interesting.

As Methos and his children walked home, Tanquel chattered of their new neighbors. "In the kitchen, I heard that his father died three years ago, and Lucius and his mother began following the Way soon after. He wants to be a knife maker."

"It's a good skill," Methos observed. Lucius and Tanquel might make a good couple … if their parents didn't kill each other. "What's his mother called?"

"Vibia Cornelia. After Lucius's mother died in childbirth, his father married Vibia. She's never had any children of her own."

Trust the women of the kitchen to know all the gossip.

"Lucius said he'd never been on a boat in his life until this journey, Father," Abenner said. "Can you imagine?"

"Rome has only a river," Methos reminded him. "Not a sea as we do here."

"I like Lucius," said Abenner. "I'm glad they've come."

Methos could not yet say the same.

But in the months that followed, he and Vibia grew to be friends. Their truce held, buttressed by commitment to their shared religion. They could speak with each other of former days and long lives. She was nearly eight hundred, born in Rome when each of the seven villages had stood on its own hill, separated from the others by fields. Methos and Vibia discussed politics and history, literature and philosophy, and religion.

"My teacher told me that we immortals were children of Mars," Vibia said one day after the evening meal. "Mars put us here to battle, and he would take the winner of the Game to Olympus to become a god. But now…" She looked out to the narrow arm of the sea, shimmering in the sunshine, and drank more wine. "I like the teachings of Jesus, and I like that in this community of believers we can trust each other. We are honest and fair with everyone. It's like Rome used to be. Honor means something again. I would like to join, to be baptized-"

"You haven't been baptized yet?" Methos asked in surprise.

"No. So I have not been forgiven my sins, and they are many. But the elders here say there is only one god, and that Jesus brings a message of peace from that god. I cannot understand how a god of peace would set us on this earth only to fight each other in the Game. So I cannot believe." She drained her cup then idly rolled the clay vessel between her hands, back and forth and back again. "Lucius does not understand, and I can not explain. He prays for me. I wish…"

The cup stopped rolling, and she sat motionless and silent, staring at the sea."What if I were to tell you," Methos began slowly, "that the gods had nothing to do with the Game?" She turned to look at him, dark eyes searching, and he added, "What if I were to tell you that immortals invented the prize?"

Her eyes slowly narrowed. "What do you mean?"

Methos took a deep breath and admitted the truth. "I started the Game."

After his explanation, she sat silent. The sun settled on the hills, and the sea glowed molten silver in the low slanting light. The silver faded, and the light died.

"If we are not children of Mars sent here to fight," she said finally, "what god put us here? And why?"

"I do not know," Methos answered, as he had answered many times before. "But mortals ask those same questions, Vibia."

"But immortals have one more question: why do we not die?"

"I do not know," he answered again. "Sometimes I've thought it a blessing, sometimes a curse."

"Perhaps it is a duty," she suggested.

"What do you mean?"

"When I was a child," Vibia said, "I was taught that during our lives we should honor our families, bring glory to Rome, and show reverence to the gods. That was our duty. The elders in this village tell us Jesus said we are here to care for one another, and so that is our duty. Perhaps the gods—or the one god—sent us here to carry that message to all people, down through the ages, and that is immortals' duty."

"They certainly took their time about it," Methos noted. "We've both been here for centuries."

"Gods are immortal. Time is not the same for them." She turned to him and took his hands. "Thank you," she said, "for explaining that I am no daughter of Mars. Now I can believe in the one god. I can be baptized and forgiven my sins."

Methos was relieved to be met with gratitude instead of rage, but then she bent her head and kissed his hands, hands that had killed thousands and tortured and maimed thousands more. "Vibia, no," he said, pulling away.

She didn't let go. "Just as you were forgiven yours sins, Adam." She tightened her grip. "A new name. A new life. A new way."

"Yes," he agreed, now holding on just as tightly as she. That was the promise he had made. He would never be a Horseman again.

"And you must tell other immortals what you told me," Vibia said.

"I don't think—"

"This is your duty, Adam," she said, still a stern and virtuous Roman at the core. "Tell them there is no Prize, that they must not play the Game. Then we shall tell them of the Way."

"You want me to be an evangelist and spread the good news?" he said, nearly laughing at the idea.

"It is your chance to atone."

This time he was the one to sit in silence, as the moon rose in the sky and the stars shimmered and the sea surged relentlessly in and out, like hearts beating and blood surging and the endless days and nights went on, while in his dreams a child he had murdered looked up at him with black holes for eyes and pleaded through shattered teeth and broken jaw for him to pick her up and carry her home.

So he would pick her up, and she would wrap her legs around his waist and wind her bleeding stumps of arms around his neck, and he would stumble through the sand, bent over with the weight of her. Sometimes he stepped on entrails that had spilled from sword slits in her belly, and that pulled out her insides, and he had to stop and stuff in liver and stomach and lungs and heart, and pick her up again. He carried her, sometimes in his arms and sometimes with her clinging on his back. Her blood ran down his chest and his legs, and her tears dripped on his shoulders, and her sobs sounded in his ears.

He carried the dead child home to a burnt-out hut and a mother and a father that he had murdered days before. And he would dig a hole and bury the family, and sometimes their heads and limbs came off in his hands, and he had to put the pieces back together before he could fill in the grave.

One by one by one he carried dead children, night after night after night, for he had killed by the tens and the hundreds and the thousands, and each and every one of them wanted to go home.

The god had forgiven him, but he had not forgiven himself. He could not make amends to the mortals he had killed, but he could try to stop immortals killing for the Prize. He had tried before and failed, but now he had a partner, and they had something better to offer than the Game.

He must at least try. So Methos answered, "Yes."

* * *

In autumn, after Tanquel and Lucius were married, Methos and Vibia set out with two other Christians to spread the good news. Along with mortals, they also met immortals here and there. Methos would tell them there was no Prize and they should not play the Game.

"There is another way," Vibia would suggest then tell them of Jesus and the message of love.

Most immortals were disbelieving, a few were relieved; the rest reacted with rage, hatred, and attempts to kill.

"They act just like the mortals," Methos observed.

"They don't know us," Vibia said, undeterred. "So they don't trust us. We should seek out my teacher, and my students and friends. And yours, too."

"I don't have anyone to tell," he admitted. He didn't remember a teacher, he hadn't taken on a student in more than a millennium, and the only immortals he'd been friends with lately were the Horsemen. They already knew about the origins of the Game, and he was fairly certain they wouldn't be interested in the Way. He didn't want to talk to them to find out.

"Aren't you lonely, Adam?" Vibia asked, and when he shrugged and didn't answer, she took his hand and kissed it, and then she kissed him. That night, for the first time since his wife had died, he didn't sleep alone. He didn't dream of murdered children, either.

Most of Vibia's students and friends were at least willing to listen, and nearly half were convinced. Some were enthusiastic converts to the cause and promised to spread the word; some were still wary. "I won't hunt anymore," one former student agreed. "But I will defend myself."

"Good," Methos said, before Vibia could object.

"We are not supposed to kill," she reminded him as they walked down the stairs of the three-story tenement. Below them in center of the atrium, a solitary lemon tree reached for the sunlight. "We should turn the other cheek."

"It's not our cheeks they're aiming for; it's our necks," he reminded her. "Then we'd be dead."

"To die for a belief is honorable."

Methos didn't want to die for anything, but he knew Vibia needed more reason than that. "Dying is not honorable when it gives an enemy more power," Methos pointed out. "We must not surrender our quickenings so easily."

"But—" Vibia began but then was silent until they reached the ground. She slowed then stopped next to the tree. "I had hoped more people would believe," she confessed. "I had thought if we could stop the hunting, then we wouldn't need to kill anymore. But I see now it will take time."

"We've only just started," Methos reminded her. "The Game began more than a thousand years ago."

"But even after our message spreads, not everyone will choose follow the Way. And even without the prize, some people don't need any reason to fight." She gently stroked a leaf. It quivered under her hand. "I don't think we can stop the killing, Adam."

"Not completely, no," Methos agreed. "People—mortals and immortals alike—have always killed each other, and will always kill each other. But if we stop the Game, Vibia, then we give back to immortals the chance to live as friends instead of enemies. Imagine not always fearing every immortal you meet. Imagine trusting each other, liking each other. Having friends."

"Like in our village," she said. "Except without the lies we must tell to mortals."

"Yes, exactly. Without the lies."

She smiled at him and took his hand once more. "Like with you."

Methos smiled back and kissed her, sweet and warm and real. "Yes. Like with you."

* * *

A year after they had left they returned to their village, just in time to see their granddaughter born. "Her name is Junia," Lucius announced then went to take Tanquel a drink.

"Have you ever cared for a grandchild before, Adam?" Vibia asked, sitting near the fire and holding the infant in her arms. She stared down at it with the usual—yet still wonderful—awe.

"A few times." Methos leaned over for a better look at Junia. Her eyelashes were perfect crescents against her cheeks, and she was beautiful. "Usually I leave once the children are grown."

"So do I. I'm glad to stay." She kissed the baby's nose. "To have a family and a home."

"I am, too." To have a family and a community was wonderful and rare. And to have an immortal companion again was marvelous. He touched Vibia's hair, thick and warm, and then twined it around his fingers and leaned over to kiss her.

"Mmm," she murmured, smiling, but warned, "I'm sleeping here. And you must sleep in your cottage."

"Come for a visit at midday?" he suggested.

"Not in this village, where our children live. Also, the bishop has been quite clear on the teaching that only married couples should have sex."

Methos didn't think that teaching would catch on, but it was never wise to flout a community's rules. "Then let's get married."

Vibia laughed. Methos didn't. "You're serious," she said in surprise.

He hadn't quite realized it before, but… "Yes."

She seemed less than thrilled. "You want to get married so we can have sex."

"No." Now she seemed annoyed. "Well, yes," he hastily amended. "But not just that. I'd like us to be a family.'

"We are a family. Our children are married, and Junia is our granddaughter."

Methos knelt beside her and took her hand in his. "By us, I meant you and me."

"Adam," she said, her eyes and voice soft with surprise.

He'd proposed often enough to know when the answer was likely to be yes, so he pressed on. "Will you be my wife, Vibia?"

She looked him over, up and down, then almost smiled. "For how long?"

"Ah," he said. "Yes." None of his wives had been immortal. "It doesn't have to be forever," he said, backing off. "Perhaps just till one of us dies?"

Her smile broke through. "But what if we like it?"

He grinned back. "Then we can get married again."

"Yes," she agreed.

The wedding was planned for the winter, and Methos spent the autumn fishing with his son in the mornings. In the afternoons, Methos and Abenner built another room onto their cottage. Junia learned to smile, and Vibia and Methos helped her practice that every day. "We'll travel later," Vibia said. "In the summer. Or perhaps next year."

"Or ten years?" Methos suggested, not wishing to miss a moment with his family.

Vibia shook her head. "We have to keep spreading the word."

* * *

But the word was spreading on its own, just as the Game had. A few days before their wedding, Methos and Vibia went walking, and when they returned to her cottage, the sense of an immortal slithered down his spine.

Methos cursed and drew his sword. Vibia took out a knife. After two steps she stopped and whispered, "Junia."

Cold rage rose up in Methos's heart, for in the doorway stood a man with the hooked blade of a falx at his side and a knife in his right hand. He was also holding their granddaughter in the crook of his left arm.

"Come in!" the man called, sounding cheerful, and walked inside.

"Who is that?" Methos demanded as he and Vibia cautiously approached the open door.

"That's Ziakis from Dacia," Vibia said. "He's about three hundred years old. His teacher was a student of mine."

Another type of grandchild. The murderous kind.

Vibia bit her lip in concern. "He's always followed the rules before."

Without the Game, there were no rules.

Methos went inside, alert for henchmen and other foes, but apart from Ziakis and the baby near the hearth of dark stones on the far side of the room, and Lucius and Tanquel lying bound, gagged, and bruised on the bed in the corner, they were alone. Lucius seemed dazed, but Tanquel looked up at Methos pleadingly, her eyes wide with frantic fear. He tried to make his expression reassuring for her, and it worked well enough that she nodded a bit and stopped straining at her bonds.

Methos had no one to reassure him. Ziakis was strongly built, looked to be experienced with weapons, and since he'd survived three hundred years, he was probably an experienced killer, too. Even worse, his dark eyes held more than a glint of insane purpose. Methos recognized that look.

"What are you doing, Ziakis?" Vibia demanded.

"Why, what I was taught to do," he replied, sounding surprised. "Kill. As my teacher taught me, and as you taught him." He looked down at the baby and with infinite care placed the sharp edge of the knife so that it almost touched the soft skin of Junia's throat. The golden spiral of Ziakis's bracelet gleamed in a ray of late sunshine that came through the single window, and one of the garnet eyes of its snake finial glittered scarlet.

Vibia's gaze stayed on the knife as she said, "I taught him, and he taught you, to fight others of our kind, not to murder innocent mortals. Certainly not infants." She took a step closer to Ziakis.

Methos took a step toward the other wall. If they could come at Ziakis from both sides...

Ziakis shrugged, but held the knife precisely in place. "Death opens the gate to paradise."

Methos took another step, slow and cautious. At least two more before he could reach the other man. The table was in the way. He could-

"Stop," Ziakis told him, flicking a glance his way. He tilted the knife, just a bit, and Junia murmured in her sleep. Methos stopped. "Back up," Ziakis ordered. "Both of you. But first put your weapons on the floor."

Vibia and Methos obeyed. On the bed, Tanquel was weeping silent tears. Lucius was lying very still.

Ziakis returned to the conversation. "Your cult believes in paradise, does it not?"

"We do," Vibia answered. "We also believe killing is wrong."

"So I heard." Ziakis wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Two months ago, my teacher told me of your tale, you and this man you call Adam. 'There is no prize,' my teacher said. 'There should be no game, it's all a big mistake, and so all immortals should live together in peace now'."

Vibia held out both hands, palms up and open, and moved toward Ziakis again, not a step, just a shuffle. Methos did the same "It's true," Vibia told Ziakis.

"It isn't true - it can't be true - not when the Prize is real. And it has to be real."

Vibia shook her head. "It's a lie."

"No!" Ziakis shouted.

To Methos's ear, the man's rage was laced with panic. Not a good combination.

"I am a warrior," Ziakis proclaimed, lifting his chin. "I have followed the code. I have fought, and fought well. I have killed, and killed many, all for the sake of the Prize. But without the Prize, there is no Game, and without the Game, there is no code. That would make me a murderer." He shook his head savagely. "I am not a murderer."

"Then put down the child," Vibia urged.

"So you can kill me?"

"We won't kill you," she said reassuringly.

Methos would. The mad glint in Ziakis's eyes had turned into a frantic gleam.

"I don't believe you," Ziakis said. "Not about that, not about the Game. The Game is real." Ziakis was almost crooning the words. "I've lived with it since I was child. An immortal killed my family to take me. Another immortal killed my wife and my son. I've lost everyone I've loved."

"So have I," Vibia said.

"Oh no, Vibia," Zikias corrected. "You haven't." He looked down at the sleeping child in his arms. The knife blade shimmered above his hand. "Not yet."

"Please." Vibia was begging now, and as she went to her knees, Methos knew they were out of time. Two great steps and then he launched himself across the table. His plan was to knock into Zikias and have them both come down to the floor. His hope was to cushion Junia's fall with his own body and then wrestle the knife away.

But Zikias threw the knife, straight into Vibia's throat, even as he gripped one of Junia's ankles in his other hand. Then he pivoted toward Methos, swinging round so that Junia's head smashed against the corner of the wooden table.

Methos heard the crack of her skull, like an egg against a bowl, liquid and oozing. He'd heard that sound before, many times, as fire crackled and mothers wailed and his brothers shouted and he laughed aloud, with a dead baby dangling from his hand.

Junia was dead, and behind a gag her mother tried to wail, a smothered choking sound.

Methos's cold rage flared into killing glee. He and Ziakis started with fists and teeth, and once they got hold of weapons, Methos maneuvered the other man out the door. The fight was brutal and bloody and over too quickly; Methos had wanted to hear the other man scream. But Ziakis's head lay next to his arm, and his body lay crumpled a few paces away.

Methos stood, his chest heaving, and waited for the lightning to scorch his soul. Like the fight, it was brutal and over too quickly; he hungered for more.

He was still breathing through the exquisite pain when he smelled smoke. The roof was aflame, probably a stray bolt from the quickening. He dropped the sword and ran to the door. The baskets on the ceiling were burning, and then a storage jar exploded, spraying a mist of oil everywhere. The very air sizzled, and like the Hydra, coils of smoke lifted endless heads with tongues of flame.

Methos crawled to Vibia, pulled the knife from her throat, then used the bloody blade to cut Tanquel free. "Junia!" she cried, and Methos snatched up the baby by its ankle and got them all out of that hell.

After a few steps, Tanquel turned back, hugging the tiny corpse to her breast. "Lucius is still in there!" she said frantically.

"Stay out!" Methos ordered, and he laid his mantle over his head and pulled the corner of it across his mouth and nose as he ran back inside. One wall was ablaze, but the oil mist had burned away. The knife grew hot in his hand as he cut Lucius free. Methos hauled him out then laid him on the ground next to Tanquel and the pair of neighbors who had arrived.

He turned to go back for Vibia, ignoring Tanquel's cry of "Father, don't!" Methos sprinted to the inferno, took a gulp of air and held it, then ran inside, grabbed Vibia's hands and pulled, scuttling backwards like a crab. She was still dead, and her dress and her hair were on fire, and some of her skin stuck to his palms. When they got clear of the flames, he tossed his mantle on top of her to smother the flames and beat them down with his hands. It took time and seared his skin raw in some places, but at least she couldn't scream.

"Burned to death," one of the neighbors said in horror. "What a terrible way to die."

"No, she was dead before," Tanquel told her. "That man killed her with a knife."

"At least she didn't suffer."

She was going to. Methos had seen Immortals recover from burns before. He sat back on his heels and slumped over, covering his face with his hands, and also hiding the blue sparks of healing that danced over his skin.

Other people were arriving, half the village it seemed. "Who's this?" Simos was demanding, standing near the beheaded corpse. "Who killed him?"

Methos stood up slowly, and people turned to look his way. "I did."

Simos looked at the blood puddling near his feet. "You cut off his head?"

That seemed fairly obvious.

"We do not kill, Adam," Simos informed him.

"He did." Methos rubbed at his face, smearing blood and ash, and finding tears. "And now he won't."

Simos shook his head. Behind him, the cottage still burned. On the ground near him, Tanquel sat holding her dead baby in her arms, with her husband limp beside her. Simos turned, looking at everyone gathered there. "We do not kill."

Methos did.

"Should we tell the Roman prefect?" someone asked dubiously.

"No," several people replied immediately.

"But—"

"I'll dispose of the body," Methos offered, and no one objected. No one offered to help, either, except for Abenner. Methos and his son used their boat to dump the beheaded immortal into the sea.

"I didn't know you knew how to use a sword," Abenner said as they rowed back to land.

"I've been a soldier."

"Oh." They rounded the point, their oars in steady rhythm, before Abenner said, "You never speak of it."

"It was another life." Quite a few of them.

They beached the boat, rinsed in the sea, then went to the village. The funeral for Junia and Vibia began as soon as they arrived. Lucius had recovered enough to place the first and the last stones on the cairn that held his mother and his daughter, but he was white-faced and shaky.

"He should be at home in bed," one of the old women muttered.

"Our home is burned," Tanquel replied. She sounded surprised, like she was just realizing it now.

"Put him in my bed," Methos told her, and when she didn't move, he turned to Abenner. "Take them home."

"Come with us, Father," Abenner said, pulling on his sleeve. "You shouldn't be alone now."

He wasn't alone. Vibia was buried under those stones, and she could revive at any time. "I'd like to stay," he told his children gently. "You go home."

Methos watched his son and daughter and son-in-law leave, then announced his desire for solitude. As soon as everyone had wandered off, Methos began freeing Vibia from her grave.

The sun was setting by the time he got her out. He set her aside, kissed his granddaughter one last time, then began restacking the cairn. He didn't wipe his face, but let his tears fall on the stones. He was almost finished when Tanquel arrived. He cursed silently but didn't slow down.

She stared at the body wrapped in a sheet nearby. "Vibia is dead. Why did you unbury her?"

Methos set the last rock on the pile before turning to his daughter. "Tanquel—"

"I came to tell you to come home and eat." She laughed, a pitiful sound. "As we walked home, I was going to ask you who that man was. What was the game he talked about? What is this 'prize'? Who was his teacher, and why did he and Vibia speak of mortals and immortals?"

Tanquel swallowed hard. "Then I find you digging up the grave." She stared him at with suspicion and fear, whispering the question that Methos dreaded: "What are you?"

How could he answer that? In the early days, he'd thought himself the son of a god. Some people called him a demon. For a time, he'd been Death. He was Adam now. "I'm just a man."

Tanquel shook her head. "No. You killed that man, and you cut off his head. Then you took the lightning into yourself. I saw it through the open door."

Vibia chose that moment to revive, with twitches and hoarse moans. Tanquel's eyes widened in horror, and she backed away. Methos reached out his hand. "Daughter…"

"No! You married my mother, but you are not my father." Her fist clenched in the sign to ward off evil spirits. "Go away! Just go away. Take that… thing with you."

He should have gone years ago. Tanquel ran home, and Methos carried Vibia to the fishing hut near the beach where he had placed supplies earlier. "Wine?" she begged, but he gave her water with pain medicine and a sleeping draft mixed in. She whimpered and thrashed through the night while her skin slowly regrew, and Methos made her drink water every time she woke.

He spent the night remembering the good times with family and friends here in the village, then bid them farewell in his mind. He would never see them again.

It was nearly midmorning when Vibia emerged, unsteady on her feet and with short hair. They sat side by side, looking at the water and the sparkle of the sun.

Vibia broke the silence between them. "You did not have to take Ziakis's head."

"He killed our granddaughter," Methos said. "He would have killed our children."

She was shaking her head from side to side, like a cow dazed from a blow. "Thou shalt not kill."

"Vibia…"

She lifted her chin, her eyes stern and clear. "Thou shalt not kill."

He shook his head, sad but certain. "We can't live that way."

"I will."

* * *

They left the village together, but two days later she set off on her own. He didn't try to persuade her otherwise; their time together was done. He was done preaching peace, too, though Vibia kept at it and gained some converts. During the next fifty years, he met immortals who didn't immediately try for his head. But they were few and grew fewer each year. Hunters were following her trail, picking off the weak, the unwary, and the peaceful.

Methos was none of those. He couldn't afford to be. The Game was here to stay.

One winter, he took shelter with a band of Christians in the province of Noricum. Some of them spoke of a middle-aged Roman matron who was devoted to their cause and lived not far away. When the snows had melted, Methos went to visit.

He found Vibia in a grove of pine trees, disheveled and bloody and unarmed. Another immortal was stalking her, sword in hand.

Methos drew his own weapon and advanced.

"The battle's been joined," the man protested. "You can't interfere!"

"Wrong," Methos informed him coldly. There was no Prize. There were no rules. There should be no Game. He stepped forward, disarmed the other man, partially disemboweled him, and chopped off his head.

The quickening was vicious. His eyeballs pulsated with every heartbeat, and Methos felt as if his veins were being split open then filled with fire. When it was over, he was surprised to find he wasn't covered in his own blood. It took a few moments for his vision to clear. The dead immortal lay sprawled beneath the pine branches, but Vibia was gone.

Methos tracked her down, not very far away. She was sitting on the side of a stream with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching the water. He washed his hands in the icy stream, creating tiny rivulets of red that soon disappeared, then sat beside her, as they had done many times before.

"They're dead, you know." Her voice was rough with unshed tears. "Everyone I convinced to stop fighting. My friends. My students. Their students. That immortal's been hunting them. He told me their names, one by one."

"I'm sorry," Methos said.

"I stopped preaching ten years ago, when I realized. He killed the last of them, and then he came for me."

Methos offered her his hand, and she stared at it a moment before taking it. Her grip was painfully tight.

"I will not kill," she told him, staring straight ahead. "It is against the way. Yet others keep challenging me, and you were right: I cannot give them my quickening. And I cannot keep running, not forever."

"The world is large," Methos pointed out.

She shook her head. "I cannot live in it."

"Holy ground then." Silas's superstition against offending the gods had borne useful fruit.

But she only repeated, "I cannot live in this world." Then she turned to face him, her eyes clear and calm. "I need your help in leaving it, Adam."

His insides clenched as her meaning sank in. "You cannot ask this of me!" he protested.

"You are the only one I can ask," she countered. "Jesus said we would join him in paradise, and I look forward to seeing Junia and Lucius there, and your children, too. But, if Immortals cannot reach paradise because our souls are bound to our quickenings, I want my quickening be with you."

"No." Methos got to his feet. "I won't do it."

She looked up at him, her hands open, like a beggar in the streets. "If you will not take my head, I must find a mortal to do the deed. I could go to the magistrates in Gallia and confess myself a Christian. I hear the governor of that province imposes the death penalty upon our sect."

"But not always by beheading," Methos pointed out. "And often in the arena. You mustn't heal in front of a crowd."

"Then I shall find someone to do it privately. I can pay."

"No," he protested, sickened by the idea.

She rose to her feet, a stern and virtuous Roman matron, and asked him formally: "Adam, brother in Christ, I beg of you: help me die."

* * *

**Seaday, Summer 7, 556 PE**

**Sunearth School**

* * *

Methos stopped talking, his eyes closed and his face tight with remembered pain. Cassandra waited, there in the shade of the lodge. When he opened his eyes, she wasn't surprised to see a glimmer of tears. She waited again until he had breathed out a gusty sigh.

"Did you take Vibia's head?" She knew the answer, but she knew he needed to say it.

"I did." He bit out the words, sharp and clear. "Now you see."

"I see that telling people didn't work then."

He closed his eyes, as if in pain again, and his fists clenched and unclenched three times (probably with the urge to strangle her) before he informed her, "It won't work now."

"We have better communication now," she reminded him. "We can send a message to every immortal, all at once. There are five pre-immortals at our school on Gesseret, and we can teach them that the Prize is a myth."

"They'll still have to fight the older immortals," Methos replied. "Still need to kill."

"But only in defense, not offense," Cassandra countered.

"Unless they like the quickenings." Methos smiled grimly. "And some of them will like the quickenings."

"But if at least some of us stop—"

"It's all or nothing, Cassandra," he broke in. "You can tell us all, but you can't be sure of convincing us all, so it's nothing."

"We have to try."

He turned to face her directly. "You want to tell everyone that their whole life—every bloody century of it—was based on a lie. That they've killed people for no reason. That there is no prize at the end of their very long existence. That the Game was created by four drunk men having an argument more than thirty-five hundred years ago."

She opened her mouth to reply, but Methos wasn't done yet. "You and your Sisterhood make use of religion, Cassandra. How do people react when you take away chance of their heaven?"

He obviously wasn't going to bother to wait for an answer, so she just let him have his say.

"They get angry with you," he told her. "And they don't believe you anyway. So most immortals will keep right on believing in the Game. And those who don't…" He took a deep breath, as if facing another unpleasant truth, "…will try to kill me."

Cassandra wanted to glare back with narrowed eyes and demand, "So?" But that would not help her cause, especially as Methos took self-preservation very seriously.

So did she. "When I die," Cassandra informed him, "a letter will be sent to each immortal and to the Watchers, telling them how and when the Game was started. And by whom."

His eyes narrowed, but his mouth twitched with a smile. "I should have killed you yesterday."

She liked that they could be honest with each other. "I'd already written the letters."

"Of course you had," he murmured, then picked up a pebble and tossed it back and forth from hand to hand, never missing once.

When he finally tossed the pebble away, she said, "I am willing to wait, Methos, but I won't be silent forever. People deserve to know. They deserve the chance to make their own decisions."

"Even if they believe you—which they won't—that won't stop the killing," he warned. "We took heads before the Game, you know. People like the quickenings."

She'd never understood that. Quickenings felt like rape to her. But some people liked that, too. "Yes, and people like to kill," she acknowledged. "That's why we have laws against it. Immortals need laws, too."

"We have laws now. The tribunal polices the fights, and only legal duels—where both parties agree—are allowed."

"But some of us agree to fight only to protect the prize," she pointed out. "And we die. The way Connor died. And Duncan died. And Ceirdwyn died. And Serena died. And Ramirez died. An—"

"Enough!" Methos cut her off with sharp slicing motion of his hand and got to his feet.

She rose too then stood in front of him, blocking his way. "More than enough, Methos." Too bloody much. "If you don't tell people," she promised, "I will."

* * *

_**To be continued in the next chapter: "the hope that you've forgotten"**_


	4. 1c The Game: hope forgotten

_**the hope that you've forgotten**_

* * *

Methos walked away from Cassandra again, and he kept going. He traveled north, as the earth turned and the stars wheeled and the days and nights went on. He reached Egypt, the antique lands of pyramids and the Nile. In years past, he'd met travelers there, and he'd walked around the sphinx counterclockwise three times by the light of a full moon. The ritual was said to bring wisdom. He hadn't found that to be true.

"Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away," he murmured. Both Mr and Mrs Shelley had had a way with words.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Methos didn't want to see the crumbling edges of the pyramids again. He stopped at a village far south of Cairo and found a room.

On market day, he met a pre-immortal, a girl of seven or eight named Shariade. She wore her dark hair in tight braids and watched everyone and everything with solemn eyes, while her grandmother sold figs. Methos saw her every few days after that, walking about town with her friends or going back and forth to school. She had a merry laugh, but she wasn't a giggler. Methos made friends with the grandmother, helping her to fix her fence, and she decided he needed to be fed. Eventually he got Shariade to smile a time or two, and he helped her do her sums for school.

As she stared at the numbers and chewed on the end of her stylus, he wondered how and when she would die. How many people might she kill before one of them killed her? "Is that correct?" the girl asked, looking up.

Methos checked her answer. "Yes. You did well."

Shariade nodded in satisfaction then turned back to her work, intent and focused.

How long until she was destroyed by the Game?

He left that night for the spaceport. It was time to disappear.

Amanda had other plans. "Darling!" she exclaimed, in the echoing space where people bought tickets and then waited to go somewhere else. She kissed both his cheeks and then his mouth, and she held onto his hands. She was a honey blonde this year, and her hair hung in long, loose curls. Her cling-tite clothes (the very latest in fashion) shifted slowly from shades of blue to strategic see-through, and she wore a gold nose ring. "What a wonderful surprise! I didn't know you were on Earth."

"Just visiting."

Her smile trembled and fled. "Visiting Cassandra. About Connor."

"Yes." Methos had borne a similar message of death to Amanda not so very long ago.

"You're very thoughtful," she said quietly and kissed his cheek.

Thinking made life easier.

Amanda turned practical again. "Did Cassandra send you to meet me?"

"No." Methos lifted Amanda's hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips. "This was all my idea."

She caught her breath then murmured, "Excellent idea." Methos helped Amanda carry her bags to a hotel.

* * *

The next morning during breakfast, Amanda asked, "Are Karla and Chelle at the school yet?"

"Not that I saw. But I haven't been there lately." No point in lying, Amanda would find out soon enough.

"We should leave soon. The Equinox is almost here."

The time when the world lay balanced between light and dark, and these four women were gathering, no doubt each with her talisman of power. Amanda had asked for Cassandra's help in gathering the crystal shards of the Methuselah Stone, and they'd finished the job a hundred years ago. Karla Morgan (a.k.a. Morgaine, the Lady of the Lake, the She-Wolf of the Battlefield, or Sister Mary Carlotta) owned a sword said to have been used by King Arthur. Chelle (first known as Michelle Webster, one of Duncan's protégés who'd surprisingly managed to survive the last six hundred years) had inherited Ceirdwyn's cauldron with its secrets of rebirth and wisdom. Cassandra had been gathering items of power for years: a truth-stone, a necklace, a sickle, and probably more.

So whatever these women were up to, Methos was willing to bet it involved more than painting their toenails. He might as well ask. "Witch work?" Methos asked, sipping his coffee.

Amanda wrinkled her nose at him. "I'm not a witch, any more than Rebecca was. Neither are Chelle or Karla."

Cassandra was. And she was also (almost certainly) going to blab about the Game. Since he couldn't keep her quiet, he could at least add his own spin. He helped Amanda carry her bags all the way back to the Phinyx school.

"Sorry, I have to dash!" she said, glancing up at the half circle of the moon, and she ran up the stairs of Cassandra's tower.

He could see three other women on the roof, dark against the evening sky. He wasn't sure, but it seemed they weren't wearing any clothes.

* * *

**Southward Equinox, 556 PE**

**Sunearth School**

* * *

"It's windy up here," Amanda observed when she finally appeared on the roof.

"It usually is," Cassandra agreed.

Amanda began to braid her long hair with nimble fingers. Cassandra had done that before she came outside.

Chelle, who was still shaving her head in mourning for Connor and Duncan, tapped her foot, either in nervousness or impatience; Cassandra wasn't sure which. Karla stood still and silent, feet apart and both hands on the hilt of the ancient blade that hung straight down, its tip not quite touching the floor. The evening breeze ruffled her short hair and her nipples were crinkled, but she did not shiver.

"You brought Methos?" Chelle sounded disapproving.

Cassandra had expected him to return. Down in the courtyard, Methos was lounging against a wall and looking up at them.

"He brought me," Amanda said as she peeled off her clothes. Literally, for cling-tite was described as a second skin.

"Are those comfortable?" Cassandra asked, considering the dramatic and strategic possibilities in programmable clothing that conformed to every contour.

"Very," came the crisp reply. Then Amanda stood, tossed her braid back, and struck a pose that would have done Astarte proud. Her smile was as brilliant as the crystal orb she held in her hand. "Shall we begin?"

"I'd like to go over it one more time," Chelle said. "I've never been a Keeper in a circle before, and I don't want to fuck it up."

"You hold the bowl in both your hands, and you look in the water while the rest of us do things," Amanda explained, a little too sweetly. "Then you let us look in the water. Then we're done."

"What do I do with the water then?"

"Drink it," Karla said.

Chelle looked down at the deep bowl she held in her hands. It was of clay, a melding of earth and fire and air, molded to hold water. Collected from the rain of a recent storm, the water shimmered dark as a blade-stone, for the inside of the bowl was glazed deep black. The outside bore intertwining swirls in red and white, colors of blood and bone.

"In other rituals, you will do more," Cassandra promised Chelle. "Tonight you are the seer. Karla is the guardian, Amanda is the gatherer, and I am the singer."

"It is time," Karla said, looking to the sun on the horizon.

Laid in tile on the floor was a small, eight-pointed compass star, and the four women took up their positions: Cassandra in the east, with Amanda on her right and Karla on her left, and Chelle facing her across the star. They stood close enough to touch.

When the sun disappeared, Cassandra started the song, a low wordless tune that wove among them and bound them together, and the other women joined in, each finding their own tune. When Cassandra closed her eyes, she could sense the others: their quickenings glimmered with color. Amanda was red, Karla steel blue, and Chelle a dark violet. Her own quickening, Connor had told her, looked green. Connor had been shades of blue and gray, like the ocean, or the sky or the waters of the loch where he had been born, or the mist of the Highlands and its hills, or his eyes…

Cassandra focused on the task at hand, extending her quickening into the world, feeling the moontides in her blood, sensing the path of the earth around the sun. The tune came more easily, drawn by the wake of the heavens in their ancient dance, and Karla lifted her sword, swaying in time.

She moved about them, turning and bowing, the tip of the sword tracing out intricate patterns and leaving ice-blue swirls of quickening in the air. The lines of energy crossed and recrossed, weaving a net about them, a protective shell that arced above and below. Their own quickenings were drawn to it and into it, and the blue net became a gossamer plaid.

When Karla returned to her place, Cassandra went from singing to humming, and Amanda lifted the crystal orb. It pulsated with all the colors of the quickenings, the crystals inside it resonating in different shades. She held it high and more colors appeared, carried in by tiny sparks, like fireflies streaming in from all over the sky. A rainbow shimmered within the orb, every color of the spectrum, growing brighter and brighter, becoming white.

When she touched the orb to the tip of the sword, it flared, too bright to look at. Cassandra closed her eyes, and followed the brightness from behind closed eyelids. Amanda moved in a dance of her own, and orb etched white fire, weaving another web. When it was complete, she stood in the center of the star and let the orb roll from her palms into the water of Chelle's bowl with nary a splash.

Then Cassandra lifted her own talisman, a flute crafted from a man's thigh bone and bored with holes on the darkest night of the year. She set it to her lips and began to play, holding each note long and low. The black water in the bowl rippled, revealing currents of the future and the past, and Chelle stared into the scrying bowl in her hands.

Finally she lifted her head and held out the bowl, and Amanda and Karla leaned in to see. When they were done Cassandra played one last note, looking into the bowl, and then she let the music fade and watched the water as the ripples died away.

The image in the scrying bowl did not change.

Then Chelle drank the water, Karla cut the threads of energy around them, and the circle was done. Cassandra pulled her robe on, grateful for the warmth, and sank to the floor. She was shaking with a mixture of cold and fatigue, and she desperately needed food. And tea.

Amanda retrieved her orb from the bowl then shook it, flicking off water drops. "Well," she announced, "that's not what I expected to see."

* * *

Methos had been standing in the courtyard when Doral, a teacher he had befriended on his earlier visit, had greeted him warmly then asked, "What are you looking at up there?"

"The lights at the top."

Doral had peered at the tower. "What lights?"

Lights that apparently only immortals could see. "The stars," he had told her then immediately suggested dinner, and they had enjoyed a meal in the dining hall.

When he came back outside, the light show was over and the rooftop looked deserted, so he climbed the tower stairs. The women knew he was coming; immortal doorbells rang loud and clear. He winced and paused at a landing to let their four quickenings align with his.

He paused again in the doorway, this time to nod cheerfully at everyone, while he hastily evaluated the situation. Everyone had their clothes on, a tea party was in progress, and there were no furious glares. Methos found it easier to summon a smile. Cassandra hadn't told them about the Game.

Yet.

Karla gave him a friendly nod. Her long legs were stretched out in front of her, booted feet crossed at the ankles, and she was balancing a plum on the flat of a dagger blade. Chelle looked at him with serious eyes in a forever-youthful face. She wore a plain brown jumpsuit and she'd shaved her dark hair down to stubble. Perhaps she had joined the military again.

Amanda patted the place beside her in invitation to him, but it wasn't her house, so Methos stayed at the doorway until Cassandra said, "Methos, please do come in."

He took the seat next to Amanda, Chelle poured him tea, and Cassandra passed him the plate of ginger biscuits. All nice and cozy, but not why he had returned to this school. "So," he said, taking a bite of the biscuit, "your coven boil any newts tonight?"

"Ew." Amanda shuddered.

"Toads get boiled," Karla said. "Newts just lose their eyes. According to Shakespeare, that is."

"Ew again," Amanda said.

"I've never cared for that scene with the three witches," Cassandra commented. "All those ingredients make everything seem so complicated. Tongue of dog, blood of baboon…"

"Worse than that French cookbook my grandmother used," Chelle said.

The women were being chatty, but not informative. Methos finished his biscuit and bided his time while Amanda told a story of hiding stolen jewels inside a roasted boar and pearls inside a puff pastry.

Then Chelle poured everyone more tea, the task that always seemed to belong to the junior member of every group. Not that she was young. She was two hundred years older than Duncan had been when he had first knocked on Methos's door. Six hundred years since Methos had invited Duncan in and tossed him a beer, telling him, "Mi casa es su casa."

Eventually, that had come true. They'd even bought a few houses together, and they'd celebrated Duncan's thousandth birthday with a home-cooked meal.

No more meals. No more birthdays.

No more Duncan.

Methos became aware of a silence and looked up to find all four women watching him. His tea cup had gone cool in his hand.

"We saw something of interest on the roof tonight," Karla told him, then flicked her dagger upward, tossing a plum in the air. She caught it on the flat of the blade.

Methos wasn't in the mood for guessing games, but this was why he had returned. So he asked, "And what was that?"

For answer Karla took a bite of plum, lush and juicy, and chewed, all the while regarding him with thoughtful eyes. She swallowed then set the fruit and the dagger on the table. "You."

Methos managed not to snort tea from his nose. "Oh."

"Your face was in the water of the scrying bowl," Chelle told him. "I saw it, too."

"So did I," Amanda said.

He wondered if he had drawn four of a kind. "Cassandra?"

"I see you in flames."

She'd told him once she saw death in flames.

"And in the water tonight," she added.

Methos did not like this. "I had no idea I was so popular," he said lightly.

"I asked the orb to show us what was changing," Amanda said. "What we needed to be aware of. And all four of us saw you."

"Why is that, Methos?" Karla leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her dagger once again in her hand. "What do we need to know?"

He could not have asked for a more perfect introduction. Assuming, that is, that he wanted to talk about the Game. Which he didn't.

But Cassandra did. And would.

She was watching him now, waiting. They all were. And what if he did tell them? They wouldn't try to kill him for it. That wasn't their style. Unlike the idealistic Cassandra, the other three women were utterly pragmatic, in their own ways. Soldiers and thieves needed to be. Perhaps they might be able to convince Cassandra to give up her mad scheme of trying to stop the Game.

Methos took another biscuit, took a deep breath, and then told them all of the beginning of the Game. Amanda left the table, going to stare at a closed window, her back to him. He finished the tale quickly: his attempts to stop the Game (but not Vibia's), how people didn't believe, how it had mutated out of control.

"You," Chelle said when he finished. "You four." She looked white, if a bit green about the gills. Then she started cursing him, low and monotonous.

Methos had heard all the words before, if not in that exact order.

Eventually, Karla laid a hand on the younger woman's forearm. "Chelle," she said softly, and Chelle went mutinously silent. Karla ignored Methos and turned to Cassandra. "You knew?"

"Since late Summer."

Chelle muttered another obscenity, but Karla responded with an upward flash of the eyebrows and a quick glance at him, and Cassandra gave a tiny uplift of her chin. Then they both gave minute shrugs. Methos translated that as Karla saying, "Understood, and you gave him the chance to come clean, but you would have told us if he didn't" and Cassandra replying "Yes" and then the two of them moving on.

"You're not surprised," Methos observed.

Karla's lips tightened but she put away her dagger. "Not entirely. I've watched other myths be born."

Methos pushed back from the table and went to the window. "Amanda…"

She whirled around and slapped him. "How could you?" Her voice was trembling, and she slapped him again. Then she burst into tears and fell into his arms.

"I'm sorry," he told her, holding her close. Her body was trembling, too. "I'm so sorry."

At the end of it, she kissed him, and then they sat back down.

Methos's tea had gone cold. Chelle didn't offer to pour him more.

"There's the change," Cassandra told them all.

Chelle nodded. "We need to stop the Game."

Karla, master tactician, shook her head slowly. "I'm not so sure."

Methos always had liked her.

"Duncan would have wanted us to," Cassandra said once more.

"Yes, he would," Chelle agreed. "So would Connor."

"Duncan and Connor are dead," Amanda replied flatly. "They don't want anything." She got up and left the room, trying to hide the glimmer of tears.

* * *

She left the school, too. When Methos went to see her in the morning, her bed was made and all her clothes were gone. But she hadn't taken the orb. It sat on her pillow, like an egg in a nest.

Karla was already in the room, and she looked from Methos to the orb and then back again. "Have you have ever used that?" she asked.

"No." He'd wanted to, centuries ago, to revive a dying love. Alexa. Yes, that had been her name.

Karla leaned over and picked it up, even tossed it from hand to hand. "Want to?"

Of course he did. But curiousness was best paired with cautiousness. "For what?"

"We're going to be searching for pre-immortals, and it's easier to do the work with four. You could help."

Learning more about the coven—and its members—might be useful someday. And learning about the orb was a rare opportunity. "Sure."

Karla handed the orb to him. Methos was surprised by its warmth.

Cassandra looked surprised to see him carrying it when he and Karla showed up in her room. And none too pleased. "No."

Karla ignored that. "Amanda left it for him to use, or she would have put it back in the vault."

"We can manage with three."

Karla leaned her shoulder against the wall and just looked at Cassandra, before finally saying, "You know why."

"That's not certain," Cassandra replied.

"I'm certain."

Methos was certain he enjoyed watching Cassandra lose a squabble, even if he didn't know what it was about.

Cassandra paused then found something else to complain about. "He's untrained."

"He can learn."

Cassandra finally looked at him and met his eyes. "Not from me."

Methos could see that it wasn't hate or spite holding her back; it was fear. Nor was he eager to be her student. "Wise choice." He turned to Karla. "What do I have to do?"

* * *

The lessons were both subtle and straightforward. Karla took him to the rooftop, where the sunshine was bright and warm. They sat with their backs against the parapet. "Amanda says that the orb responds to the energy of the quickening," Karla said. "You can focus farther, and on different things."

"So it's both an amplifier and a modulator?"

"I suppose."

"But with no user manual." He already knew the Chronicles had nothing useful, and Amanda was still learning what it could do. When Methos picked it up and stared at it, he couldn't get it to do anything.

"Try blood," Karla suggested. "Bond to it."

He cut his palm and held the orb while flickers of blue flame danced on his skin. A blurred crimson flower spread into the melded shards. Then a jolt rushed through him, and the orb flared blue. His ears tingled. "Ah," he breathed, sensing the shape of the wind and tasting salt on the air.

The quickening, he knew, could be a connection between living things. Immortals used it to identify each other, and many could sense pre-immortals. About half (including Cassandra and Silas) were able to bond with animals. Methos had never had much luck with that, but with the orb, he could share the hunger of the spider in the corner. He could see motes dancing in the air. In the garden below, he could see a flower unfurl. He could taste the water from the roots, and he could feel the delicate feet of a bee on his skin.

"That's enough," Karla said, and she took the orb away.

Methos blinked, disoriented and dizzy in the bright sun. He was on the roof, not in the garden. No bee probed him for nectar. No sun warmed his leaves. He was not a flower. He was a man.

"You back?" she asked.

He surreptitiously wiggled each finger and toe. "Yeah."

"It's easy to go too deep, especially at first," Karla warned. "You went fast, too."

Yet the sun had moved in the sky. "How long was I in that?"

"Forty minutes."

Damn. And another immortal only a few feet away. His neck itched.

"This school is on—" Karla stopped there.

"—on holy ground?" he finished wryly.

She nodded slowly. "Which means nothing anymore."

"It never did."

"No holy ground," she said thoughtfully. "No prize. But still the Game." She looked at the mountains in the distance. "Always the Game."

"Do you see any way to stop it?"

Karla half-closed her eyes in thought. "We could tell everyone then imprison or kill those who won't stop playing. When we find them. If we find them," she amended.

"But that won't stop the fighting." Karla rolled the orb between her hands. "We immortals don't need a prize in order to take heads; a quickening is enough of a reason. It's all some of us live for. So the young ones will still need to be trained. And if we do tell people there is no Game, we lose the sanctuary of holy ground." She shook her head. "I think our loss would be greater than our gain."

Methos was glad to have an ally. "So how do we convince Cassandra? She can be stubborn."

"I've noticed." Karla offered him the orb. "Look for the answer in here."

He didn't touch it. "Certain of that?"

A wisp of a smile chased across her lips. "Yes."

Methos took the orb from her hand.

* * *

With Karla's help and occasional supervision, Methos spent the next nine-day studying the orb. He took it apart and put it together in a hundred different ways. The crystals came out a different shape each time. Even their number changed. He suspected that could change its capabilities, but he didn't know how. Normal crystals could be used for data storage, clocks, amplifiers, oscillators, and a host of other things. He had a feeling that the orb could do much more. He just had to figure out how.

When it was whole, he used it to locate (but not connect with) animals and plants and to see microbes in the soil and craters on the moon. "It's a microscope and a telescope," he told Karla. "And a sound analyzer, too."

"A sense enhancer," she suggested.

He tried scent next. That gave him a headache.

"You're sniffing flowers?" Chelle said in disbelief (and some disdain) at dinner. It was the first time she'd spoken to him since he'd told them about the starting of the Game. "We need to find pre-immortals," she reminded him as she stood to gather her plate and cup. "Hopefully before someone chops off their heads."

That evening, Methos reached out for a preimmortal, the girl named Shariade. Her quickening pulsed in muted tones of pink and gold. The next morning he dimly sensed another, a boy, across the sea. He looked for Amanda, too, but couldn't find her. The next day, he told Karla he was ready.

"You need to learn to link before you go in a circle," she told him, so Karla and Methos practiced linking their quickenings, first with the orb and then without it. To his relief, it wasn't anything like a mind-meld, more like psychically holding hands, and it led to an increase in sensing range. Chelle was willing to practice with him, but Cassandra said no.

"If we don't practice, how will we manage in a circle?" he asked when he tracked her down in the kitchen, busy with preparations for the evening meal.

"Others will be with us then. It won't be just you and me."

"You're saying we need chaperones?"

Cassandra kept cutting potatoes, her gaze on her work. "Yes."

That was one way of saying she didn't want to be alone with him. Methos left her to the chopping of vegetables and went back to the orb. Three days later, Karla said they could try the circle.

"Do we have to strip?" he asked belatedly, as the four of them climbed the tower stairs.

Cassandra looked back at him over her shoulder. "Do you want to?"

"Not particularly. You?"

She didn't even answer, just kept climbing stairs.

"We already know what we're looking for," Karla explained from behind him. "We don't have to be as open to the world."

"Ah," he said, making a mental note to add that to the user manual he was writing.

On the rooftop, Cassandra started playing the flute, long notes in no musical pattern that Methos could hear. Chelle placed her clay pot (the current incarnation of the sacred cauldron of rebirth) upside down in the center of the star, and Methos placed the orb on top of it, the epitome of a crystal ball.

Then Karla touched the sword's pommel to the orb, which melted and then reformed, encasing both cauldron and hilt. Karla let go and took her place on the east point of the star, between Methos and Cassandra and facing Chelle. At the center of the star stood the upright blade, pointing to the sky, a sword in a stone. Or an antenna.

Cassandra was humming now, low and resonant, and they each set their fingertips to the reshaped crystal. Methos could feel vibration down to his toes. Karla slid her hand over to touch his, and their quickenings linked, just as before. Then Chelle's hand brushed his, and another link was formed. The humming sounded in harmony, and he felt as if he were standing, swaying a bit and holding onto their hands, instead of just barely touching. He watched as Cassandra reached out to Karla and Chelle, forming links with them, and then the circle was formed.

The vibrations surged, almost painful, then settled into a comforting hum, like a cat's purr. In his mind's eye, Chelle and Karla were steady glows, but he couldn't feel anything from Cassandra, except for a fleeting impression of an eggshell, iridescent and smooth.

"Find them," Chelle said. "We need to bring them home."

With the others, Methos focused on locating the pulsing sparks of preimmortals, and a thin beam of blue, like a search light, sprang from the tip of the upright blade. Suddenly Methos could see Shariade's quickening, bright as a pulsar. And there was the boy across the water, so much clearer now. Tauseen was young, hungry and cold, living in India. Methos made note of the town. He reached farther and sensed a crying baby in New Zealand, and then cold dark sweeps of water and nothingness, until a Methos found an eleven-year-old boy in Argentina, halfway around the world.

He found immortals, too, and tried to ignore them, but it was dizzying work, and Methos was glad when Chelle called a halt to it and Karla retrieved her blade. Methos picked up the orb, dark and warm.

"Write it all down," Cassandra said and passed out stylus and pads. "We'll compare notes in the morning, after a good night's sleep. Tomorrow night, we'll work on linking with each other more directly, and then we'll search the moon and Mars."

By Sunday, they had identified nine pre-immortals in the solar system, six of them on Earth. "We'll tell them they've been awarded a scholarship to any Phinyx school they choose," Cassandra said. "Their families can come too."

Methos went to India to pick up the boy who didn't have a family. Tauseen did not speak a word on the long trip to Sunearth School, and at meals he ate quickly and in fear. Methos told him stories and talked about the school where Tauseen would live and the things he could learn. Methos could see that the boy didn't believe him.

At the school, Tauseen obediently went off with one of the teachers, never looking back. "Will he ever be able to bond?" Chelle asked in concern.

"It may be too late for him," Cassandra said as they watched the boy go. "An unhappy childhood can damage a person deeply."

Methos hadn't found Kronos until he was seven.

Chelle cursed softly. "We get damaged enough later on. We don't need to start out that way, too. We need to find them sooner, Cass."

"I know. But on my own I can't search far. And even if you stayed on Earth to help, there are twenty-one other inhabited worlds."

Chelle was biting her lip in frustration. "If we only knew where we came from, how we got here..."

Methos didn't have an answer for that. No one did.

"I was so lucky in my parents," Chelle said, watching three young students walk by.

"So was I," Cassandra said.

"How was your childhood, Methos?" Chelle asked.

"Fine." He supposed. He didn't remember. Not a mother or a father, not a name or a tribe. He didn't even remember his first death. Nothing until that first quickening. Methos backed up against the wall as a swarm of women entered the courtyard. "Alumnae?" he asked when the twittering mob had passed.

"Yes, we have homecoming at the New Year, along with Remembrance," Cassandra said.

Which, in the current calendar, came at the end of Autumn for the northern hemisphere. He himself liked to have the year begin in spring.

"Many of the sisters return," Cassandra continued.

Like swallows. Immortals came, too. Aspen and Lo'siq came for the school's Remembrance ceremony, and Amanda and Elena arrived the day after. Amanda had black hair now, and she and Elena were arm in arm and both dressed in red. Elena greeted him warmly, so apparently Amanda hadn't told Elena about the Game.

"I'm glad you'll be here for our Remembrance ceremony tonight, _viejo_," Elena said, kissing him on the cheek and taking his hand.

Methos wasn't planning on attending.

"How's the orb?" Amanda asked him as he carried her bags to her room.

"Very interesting. Thanks for leaving it for me."

"Karla's idea."

"Was it," he murmured. "Did she also tell you to leave the school?"

"Yes, to clear the way for you."

Methos decided to find out exactly what Karla was so certain of.

Amanda pulled open her door, and he set the bags in the closet of the room. She was already staring out the window, and he joined her there. "Thank you for not telling Elena."

Amanda shrugged. "It's your mess. It's your job."

* * *

Cassandra did not agree. "If you don't tell Elena by tomorrow night, then I will," Cassandra said to him at dinner.

Methos sat back in his chair and let Karla do the talking this time.

"Immortals will still fight each other, Cassandra," she said.

"Not as much."

"Once is all it takes," Methos observed.

Karla leaned forward. "If there's no Game, then there's no Holy Ground. We'll have no sanctuary anywhere. Why lose that, yet gain nothing?"

The doors to the dining hall opened, and all three of them turned at the approach of a preimmortal. Little Shariade and her grandmother stood framed in the doorway, looking about them with wide eyes.

"For her," Cassandra said. "And for all the other children, so they don't have to grow up with a lie that destroys." She stood and went to the doorway, and Methos watched as she went down on one knee to talk to Shariade face-to-face. In just a moment or two, Cassandra got the girl to smile and then to laugh.

"She's a good mother," Karla said. She finished her beer. "Not many of us are."

Duncan had been a wonderful father. He would have wanted to adopt Tauseen, provide a home, become a family. Duncan would have taught their son how to fence and play chess and split wood with an axe and everything a father should teach a son.

It would have been a good life.

Instead Methos was at a school of women, and Cassandra was pushing him hard. Karla had an agenda, too. "Why do you want me to use the orb?" Methos asked Karla.

"Because of what I scryed on the equinox. You're the key."

"The key to what?"

Her faint smile was neither friendly nor kind. "You tell me."

He did not know.

Karla pushed back her chair and stood. "Time to start the fire for the Remembrance ceremony. Coming?"

"Yes," Methos decided suddenly. Duncan would have wanted him to.

Methos and Karla started a small fire in the grove, and the other six immortals gathered there as dusk fell. It was the usual sort of thing: music and silence, lighting candles, striking a gong, and people calling out the names of those who had died in the past twenty years or so: Ceirdwyn of the Iceni, Jon Richter, Sofia Yildirim, Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, Kyra of Sparta…

Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod.

Amanda was the first to say that name, followed by Elena and then Cassandra and Chelle together. Methos whispered it to himself.

Stories came next, helped by bottles of wine. Methos had stayed in the shadows, silent, throughout the ceremony, but Amanda and Elena pulled him into the circle around the fire, and then he was sitting between them, with an arm around each one. Throughout the night, they all made toasts and told stories, remembering the dead with laughter and tears.

Silence crept in, spattered with pops and hisses from the flames. A log fell. The fire burned low. In the east, the light began to grow. "How many of us are left?" asked Lo'siq, the youngest of them all, barely a century old.

"Eighty-nine," Cassandra told her.

"How many women?"

"Twenty-one."

One-third of whom were sitting right there. Even with the nine pre-immortals they'd just found, and the five at other schools, Immortals were an endangered species.

"I wonder if one of us will get it," Lo'siq said next. "The Prize."

Methos held his breath, but the four women who knew the truth just stared at the flames.

"I wanted Duncan to win it," Elena said, her words slurred with drink and fatigue and grief. "Or maybe Ceirdwyn. I liked her." She leaned around Methos to look at Amanda. "How about you?"

"Oh, I've given up wondering. Just like Methos." Amanda reached for the bottle and poured herself another drink.

Elena was looking at him now, head tilted and curious, just like a cat. Cassandra was in watching mode: an intent, patient stare. And they both had sharp claws. But now was definitely not the time.

"To Duncan," Methos said, raising his glass of wine. "And to Connor and Ceirdwyn and Sofia and Jon and Kyra. And to all the others, down through the years." Methos had long ago lost count of how many that was.

Karla rose, and Methos got to his feet, giving Elena a hand. Amanda managed it on her own.

They stood in a circle, all eight immortals, then raised their glasses and drank one last toast to the dead. Cassandra held out her arm and ritually poured out what was left in her cup. The red wine soaked into the ground.

How much blood had been poured upon the dark and thirsty Earth? How many heads had gone tumbling, gushing and spurting and finally dribbling out blood? How many sacrifices had been made?

Earth was the eater of men, but she did not ask to be fed. People prepared these feasts for her, and she had to accept them, the butchered bodies of her children. Earth, the mother of all.

Shariade's blood would one day feed the Earth, he knew. And Tauseen's. And all the other children, and all the women, and all the men. Thousands upon thousands of them, murdered in the name of the Game and the non-existent Prize.

Karla poured her wine next, watching him the whole time, a challenge in her eyes. If he was the key, where was the door? Could there actually be a way out of this hell he had helped create all those years ago? Methos wasn't certain, but he knew he had to try.

Duncan would have wanted him to.

* * *

_**To be continued in Part II - The Keepers**_


	5. 2a Haunts: fear within you

**the fear that is within you now**

* * *

**New Year's Eve, 556 PE Sunearth School**

* * *

"I want to try to stop the Game," Methos told Cassandra as they scattered the ashes from the Remembrance fire into the garden.

Cassandra had hoped that seeing the preimmortals and remembering Duncan would trigger a change of heart in him. She tossed another handful of gray ashes onto brown soil. "Good."

"So don't tell Elena—or anyone else—how it started until we have a plan to stop it."

Cassandra dusted off her hands and faced him, her eyes searching his. He seemed sincere, and he was including her in the effort. It could, however, just be a ploy to stall her so he could search for the letters she had prepared. So she nodded, but warned, "One year from now, I spread the word."

"Fine."

His agreement came too quickly, which meant he would argue about that later. Well, so would she. "What next?"

"A talk with the four of you."

"How about tomorrow?" Cassandra suggested. "If Elena finds out we're meeting, she'll be curious, and then you'll have to answer her questions."

"Tomorrow," he agreed, with a promptness that showed he had dealt with Elena's persistence before. "Where is she?"

"With Amanda. They're getting ready for the New Year's Eve dance tonight."

"Painting their toenails?"

"Probably." He seemed to find that funny, but Cassandra didn't bother to ask why.

The dance went well, as it usually did. People were eager to celebrate new beginnings after an observance of endings and a time of saying farewell. The next day, after hugs and a few tears, Elena left to go back home to her husband and children.

Cassandra promptly invited Methos and the other three Keepers to her tower, and they sat around the low table once again. Chelle was still pouring the tea when Methos announced, "I want to find out if there's a way we can stop the Game."

Karla leaned back, regarding him with narrowed eyes. "That's a change."

"A good one," Chelle declared.

"Is it?" Karla challenged. "We lose Holy Ground, and the fighting won't stop. Quickenings are all some of us live for."

"What if we give people something else to live for?" Methos asked.

Amanda stretched out slender legs and examined her toenails, painted iridescent blue. "And what might that be?"

"I don't know," he replied. "But all of you saw me in the scrying bowl. Maybe that's why." He leaned forward, eyes earnest and hands open. "We should at least try to find out."

From his story about Vibia, Cassandra knew that Methos wanted to atone. And with Duncan gone, Methos had nowhere to call home. He himself needed something to live for. "I agree," Cassandra said. "We should try."

"Yes," Amanda said, and Chelle nodded.

Karla took a long, quiet moment. "We can try," she said eventually. "But if we find nothing better to offer, we keep quiet. Agreed, Cassandra?"

Cassandra took her own time in answering, but finally said, "Yes." Anything was better than the Game.

"So," Methos said, looking at each of them in turn. "What is this 'key'?"

Amanda smoothed back her hair, sleek and shining. "Rebecca mentioned it once, but she'd never seen it and didn't know much about it. It's part of Keeper lore."

A legend, Cassandra would have called it. She had seen all the other talismans, but she had never seen the key. No one had ever claimed to have seen it. No one had ever found it.

Amanda shrugged. "There's a lot of lore. Most of the talismans are mentioned in stories, in one form or another."

"Four of them are in the tarot deck," Chelle said. "Cup, stone, wand, and sword."

Karla picked up her sword and laid it on the table, its hilt toward her and its tip pointing to Methos. Amanda named it: "Excalibur."

"In time past," Karla agreed. "Though the blade has had many names and many forms."

"The first blade I remember was bronze," Cassandra said. "My teacher, the Lady of the Temple, said she'd seen a blade of copper, more of a knife than a sword, and one of obsidian before that."

"Excalibur was forged of iron from a meteorite. Later the blade was made of carbon steel." Karla touched the hilt with her fingertips. "Now it's cerametal. But it is always a weapon, just as the cup is always a vessel, whether it be cauldron or chalice or grail. The liquid in it may be milk or wine or blood, and it can offer life or rebirth or wisdom."

"Or death," Chelle put in.

Methos nodded. "Right." That single word came quick, betraying his impatience at all these unnecessary details. "The four in the tarot deck, and also a flute and the orb. How many all together?"

"Nine, all told," Cassandra said. And one unspoken. "The other three are the sickle, the jewels, and the cord." Others might have seen the twitch of his lips as the beginning of a smile. Cassandra knew better. His impatience was becoming annoyance.

He hid it, asking mildly, "But not the key?"

The tenth object, the one never seen and seldom mentioned.

"The nine talismans hold power," Karla explained. "The key does nothing on its own. It is supposed to unlock the others,"

Amanda touched her hair again. "Some say the orb carries knowledge as well as power."

Cassandra saw how Amanda and Karla did not look at each other, and knew that the two of them had decided to let Methos use the orb, no doubt hoping he'd unlock something somehow. But as Karla had said: the key did nothing on its own.

"Do you mean I am to be the Keeper of something shaped like a key?" Methos asked Karla. "Or that I am the key?"

Karla glanced at Cassandra before saying to Methos: "I think your memories are the key."

"No," Cassandra said immediately.

"My memories aren't the key?" Methos asked her.

He didn't understand. "No," she said again and left the table. Out the window, she could see snow on the distant mountains.

Karla followed her, touched her shoulder. "Cassandra—"

"No." She wasn't shaking, but her hands were cold. "You cannot ask this of me."

"It is not I who am asking. You are the one who wants to stop the Game."

So she was, and now it was her turn to taste dread and reluctance and fear. And exasperation, too, at her own blindness. She should have seen this coming; she should have known. The key did nothing on its own.

"What?" Methos demanded.

She could hear the keen edge of irritation in his voice. She knew how viciously his cruelty could wound. She knew how brutally his anger could kill. In so many different ways…

"One of Cassandra's talents is opening lost memories," Chelle was explaining to Methos. "But to do that, you two will have to connect."

"Like we connected on the tower?"

"It's not just linking quickenings," Chelle warned him. "It's … deeper."

Cassandra turned at that, to meet Methos's gaze across the room. "How deep?" he asked her.

He seemed almost as unnerved as she was. Cassandra did not find that comforting. The two of them had long been tethered to each other, by death and by life. "Down to the bone," she told him.

He swallowed; she could see the skin of his throat slid over a lump of fear. Then he pushed back from the table and stood, all in one fluid movement, an unfolding of length and limb. He was wearing black again, trousers and shirt of a loose fit and a simple cloth, nothing remarkable or even noticeable, trying (as many immortals did) to pass unremembered and unseen.

Yet above stark cheekbones his eyes gleamed with hints of gold, ancient and wary and intent upon her. Remarkable eyes. Unforgettable eyes. Haunting and haunted and part of her nightmares and her dreams.

"I'm still willing to try," he told her. "Though I understand if you're not. Let me know what you decide." Then he bowed to her, gave nods to other three, and left the room.

"Cassandra…," Karla said softly, taking her hand. "Sister." Then she enfolded Cassandra in her arms, and Cassandra closed her eyes and burrowed into the familiar comfort offered there.

"I don't want to do this," Cassandra whispered against Karla's shoulder.

"I know."

But she had to. They both knew that, too. Cassandra kissed Karla's cheek, and they returned to the table. "I am going to try to open Methos's memories," Cassandra told the others. "He and I will each need a monitor. Can any of you stay?"

"I could," Chelle said, "but I told my people on Tsukuyomi that I'd be back within six months. I've been gone four and the space hops will take at least one."

"I have nothing planned," Karla said.

"I do," Amanda announced, "but it can wait."

"Then I'm off," Chelle said. "If you're sure you won't need me, Cass?"

"Thank you." Cassandra took her hand and smiled gratefully. Chelle had become very dear to her, as another woman who loved the same man, as a younger sister, and as a friend. "We'll manage. You go home." They stood and hugged, then Chelle said farewell to them all.

Cassandra didn't want to sit back down. She wandered over to her harp and laid a hand on the sweeping curve of its neck. The instrument was a thing of beauty, both in shape and sound. The ordered row of strings waited, wound tight and trapped between two pieces of polished wood. When a string broke, the whipping end of it could take out an eye.

Amanda and Karla joined her. "How long will this take?" Amanda asked.

"A nineday? Two? Maybe even all Winter." Cassandra shrugged. "Immortals are harder than mortals, and I've never tried this on someone even half his age. Also, he says his early years are blocked, and we don't know how or why."

"What do you need me to do?" Karla said.

"The usual: keep me grounded, watch my breathing, wake me up if I go too far or too deep."

"While I do the same for Methos?" Amanda said.

"Yes, while he and I are in rapport. And when we're not…"

"Yes?"

"Try to keep him happy." Cassandra used her thumb to pull a short, downward arpeggio out of the harp strings and then wished she hadn't. One of the strings was out of tune. "He's not going to like this."

Neither was she.

* * *

**New Year's Day, 557 PE**

* * *

Methos did not like the idea of Cassandra being in his head. She'd offered to open his memories centuries ago, when Ahriman had been stalking Duncan. Back then, her eyes had held a gleam of malice, and Methos (though curious) had immediately declined.

Today her eyes had held dread. He'd have preferred malice. When embarking on a perilous voyage, he liked the navigator to have a modicum of confidence that they might—just possibly—arrive at the intended destination, preferably safe and sound.

But he'd said yes to this endeavor anyway, and he was betting she would too. They both had sins to atone for, and they both liked to learn. That curiosity might get them killed someday.

He decided he was in the mood to shoot things. Two dozen arrows later, Cassandra found him at the archery range. She got a bow from the shed then joined him in sending arrows toward a small black circle on a target that didn't move. Not much of a challenge, but satisfying, even soothing, in its way.

They were tugging arrows out of the target when he asked, "So?"

Her reply was equally curt. "Yes."

Always nice to win a wager. Now that they were partners, he had the right to ask, and she had the responsibility to answer. "Why have you avoided linking with me?"

"I didn't want to go any deeper, and we're already linked," she told him.

"How?" he demanded. "Why?"

"Because millennia ago, you took my life and I gave you my soul." She faced him, eyes and voice placid, even as her thumb was testing the sharpness of an arrowpoint, idly rubbing along the edge. "I never got it all back."

"Take it," he urged. He wanted her to be whole again, and he also didn't fancy a psychic blood hound on his trail.

"I have tried," she said dryly then she turned back to the target and grasped a shaft in her hand. "But whenever I look for you, I can sense you."

He couldn't sense her, but then he wasn't a witch. "For two thousand years, you thought I was dead," he pointed out. "Why didn't you sense me then?"

"Because I thought you were dead," she replied, yanking the last arrow free. "And so I never looked for you. Also, when your body is dead, you're hidden from me," she explained as they walked back to the shooting line. "So I couldn't find you when you were buried under snow or when the Tribunal was keeping you. That's why Duncan and I needed to scry for you with—"

"With a key," he interrupted. The key to his own front door, given to Duncan just in case he ever decided to stop by. He hadn't, not back then. Eventually, Methos had sold that house and left the planet. But later, Duncan had knocked on a different door, and Methos had let Duncan in.

"With a key," she repeated then lifted her head to look at the clouds in the blue sky, blinking at the brightness, or maybe blinking back tears.

Methos stared at the ground and blinked a few times himself. Now he was a key. Or rather, Karla thought his memories were, and Cassandra was the key to opening those. "You offered to open my memories before," he said to her. "You didn't seem frightened then."

She tossed back her hair, a long heavy braid in glorious shades of bronze, and she smiled ruefully. "I knew you would say no."

And now he had said yes, and neither of them wanted to.

* * *

They started the next day, after Cassandra had finished setting up her classroom for the new term. "Are you teaching music again?" Karla asked, as they all filed into the tower room.

"Gardening."

More like ecology and biology and hydrology and a host of other –ologies about how a planet runs. Methos had sat in on some of her classes last term.

"How much time will we spend on monitoring each day?" Karla asked.

"A few hours at most. I've set aside the mornings for it," Cassandra answered. "Are you thinking of teaching again while you're here?"

"Just as an assistant. Doral said she could use a hand in the chemlab."

"And I'm going to help the drama club stage a musical," Amanda announced. "What about you, Methos?"

"I might help out here and there." And he might not. He liked keeping his schedule open.

"How many of the teachers and students here know about immortals?" Amanda asked.

"The headmistress and one of the guardians."

Many guardians knew. They'd picked up the mantle of watcherhood only a few decades after the old Watcher HQ had been blown to smithereens. Methos didn't like being watched, but having a police officer who understood the necessities of a beheading had been helpful a time or two. Methos got comfortable on one of the floor pillows and wondered if Amanda would make the tea. She was the youngest now.

"And one of the students knows," Cassandra continued as she went about the room opening the curtains. "She sees lifelines as auras, and she noticed ours. But she won't talk."

The renowned discipline of the sisterhood? Or enforcement from Cassandra and her Voice? Methos suspected both. Amanda picked the pillow next to his own, lounging on her side with the luxurious ease of a cat.

"I've been here nearly fifteen years, and I'll be moving to another school this Summer, so that more people don't notice," Cassandra said, starting to make the tea. "We're reopening schools in North America; the ash zone is diminishing every year." Cassandra chattered on about the ecological recovery from the Yellowstone eruption while she set up the tea tray.

Cassandra wasn't usually this talkative, and she very seldom showed her nervousness. Methos decided against offering to help her; she would want these last few moments without him near.

But soon the teapot and cups and saucers were ready, and Cassandra sat down facing him. No one touched the tea. "We'll start with simple memories today," she explained. "Nothing too detailed or too old. Amanda will be your monitor, and Karla will be mine."

"Why not the other way around?" Methos asked. "Karla's monitored me before, and Amanda hasn't."

"Amanda will be better at monitoring you than I am," Karla told him.

"Why?" he asked, trying to figure out the rules.

"You and I have never had sex."

"Oh." That was simple enough. Amanda flashed him a happily wicked smile that strongly suggested they could be having sex again, and soon. Karla calmly poured the tea.

Cassandra didn't touch hers. "What did you have for breakfast last Fireday, Methos?"

"Umm…"

"Let's start with that. We'll use a single crystal today." Cassandra nodded to Amanda. "Ready?"

Amanda straightened then set the orb on the table. She touched it with only her fingertips, cradling it in her hands. Then she hummed a bit and the orb opened, like an orange with its sections laid out, or like a flower feeling the sun.

From Amanda's hands, Methos selected a crystal that had a gleam of gold then set it on the table. Amanda took his left hand, and they looked at each other while they matched their breathing and let their quickenings align. Amanda's presence was denser than Chelle's, and pink instead of teal.

"I've got you," Amanda told him when they'd settled into a comfortable place, and so he looked at Cassandra. She and Karla were holding hands, still looking at each other. Without the orb to enhance his senses, the colors were muted for Methos. Karla's presence glowed dark blue, and Cassandra's white bubble seemed gray.

The two women nodded to each other; then Cassandra turned to him. "Touch your end of the crystal, Methos," she said, and he placed two fingertips there. She did the same on her end of the crystal, and the golden gleam inside it became a glow. Nothing happened, and he began to wonder when she would start.

Then Cassandra asked "What did you have for breakfast on Fireday, Methos?"

"An orange, naan, a chicken's egg, scrambled, and boiled peanuts." He could taste them, and he could smell the orange. An uneasy shudder crawled along his spine as he stared at the witch who had just crawled inside his head. He'd felt nothing at all.

"It was a surface memory, very new," she explained. "I just opened it again."

"Right." He took a slow breath and reminded himself that he'd asked for this. Then he got curious. "How?"

"I just…" Cassandra paused then came up with, "I spoke to it."

Not very useful. Methos tried again. "How did you know which one? Can you 'read' them?"

"Not in any detail. I knew it was breakfast, but not what you'd had. I'll need to do more, to build a map so I can follow the lines and learn how you link your memories. Ready?"

No. But Amanda gave him an encouraging smile and squeezed his hand, and Karla nodded, and Cassandra was waiting. So Methos said, "Map away."

After two hours of dredging up scattered vignettes from the past, one from a century ago, Cassandra called for a halt. Methos stood, gave them all a smile and a quick nod, and left the room. As he went down the stairs, he stripped off his shirt. It held a sour reek of sweat and fear, even though all he'd done was sit on a pillow and remember innocuous meals he'd eaten, outfits he'd worn, and or books he'd read.

And let Cassandra poke around in his brain.

The quick shudder that gripped him was more of a flinch, and he swallowed down acid and bile. He headed for the stables. After sitting still and getting prodded like that, he needed to ride.

Methos tacked up Mwezi, a sturdy chestnut gelding with a white crescent of a blaze. He swung into the saddle, got them safely onto the path that ran alongside the road, then gave the horse its head. Mwezi snorted and kicked his back feet a little, then settled into a run.

Ah, yes. This was good. Speed and sweat and the sunshine hot on his bare back, the mane whipping at his cheek and his eyes slitted tight against the wind, while hooves pounded beneath him and the school and everyone in it fell far behind.

"Faster," Methos told Mwezi, leaning low over the horse's neck. "Go!"

* * *

The next day was more of the same. He still didn't like it, and he was bored. Amanda had brought her knitting along, and Karla was polishing her boots. After an hour, Methos asked Cassandra, "So, does my memory look like an attic with forgotten trunks, all dusty and full of cobwebs?"

"Some people's do," she replied. "At least in part."

"Part of my memory looks like a closet," Amanda volunteered. "Some is like a museum, everything neatly stored in glass cases."

"What a surprise," Methos murmured.

"Many people have libraries," Cassandra said, "and you may, too. But this part of your memory seems like a meadow, with grass and wildflowers and trees here and there. In the distance, mountains stand covered with snow."

"It sounds pretty." And too good to be true.

"It is pretty," she agreed. "Here. But we have a long way to go."

"The mountains."

"Yes, and possibly caves or jungles or an ocean. Or a swamp."

That sounded more likely. Dead trees and rotting things sinking into the muck. "How does it work?" he asked. "What does it mean?"

"It's like a dream, so it's not linear. The images are how our brains make sense of information. In your mind, the wildflowers are short-term memories that you don't keep very long. If their leaves and stems are still there, I ask them to bloom again. Older memories that you kept will be seeds."

"That you'd have to dig for."

"Yes."

He didn't ask how deeply she would have to go. "What are the trees?"

"They seem to be things you want to remember. The mountains may be things you can't forget."

He wondered if they were jagged deadly peaks or rounded tops eroded by time.

"Why don't you let him see, like you did for me?" Amanda asked.

Someone else might have thought Cassandra's expression of thoughtfulness and half-smile were real. Methos knew better. She was not pleased.

But Cassandra simply said, "That's a good idea, Amanda. For tomorrow."

They cut the session short, and after Karla and Amanda had left, Methos told Cassandra, "I don't have to see."

"But you will," she said. "I'll need you as a guide. We could have done that already." Her half-smile was back again, rueful this time. "We should have. But I'm not finding this easy."

"Nor am I."

Her gaze was unnervingly direct. "I know."

He could be just as forthright. "Why did you go into Amanda's memory?"

"She'd seen a piece of jewelry that she liked and couldn't quite remember." Cassandra started to stack the tea cups on a tray. "I helped her to see it again."

"How long did that take?"

"Ten minutes perhaps."

Methos lifted his eyebrows in polite inquiry. "We've been at this two days."

She stood, picking up the laden tray. "We don't know what we're looking for or where we're going, and you're nearly six thousand years old. I don't want to get lost."

"And you're afraid of what you'll find."

"Yes," she agreed bluntly. "I am."

He was too.

* * *

The next day they tried it again, and this time he went with her into the landscape of memory. It was dreamlike, as she had said, with sudden shifts in locations and objects, and the recognition of things he'd never seen before, but somehow knew what they were. In the distance, the mountains stood tall in all directions, an encircling ring of forbidding spires of black and gray topped with snow. When he touched a flower, he could taste meals he'd already eaten or hear a song someone had sung four days ago.

Far away he saw a majestic oak, deep-rooted, wide-branched. And then somehow he was next to it, standing where its roots heaved the ground. It was shady beneath the leaves, cool and pleasant. Acorns lay everywhere, rolling underfoot. Methos could smell rich earth and warm leather and a spicy sharpness. He touched the rough bark, gray and furrowed, and it was warm beneath his hand. A wind rustled the leaves, and laughter danced along the branches.

"Duncan," Methos whispered, abruptly overcome with tears, for this tree was his memory of MacLeod. Methos could hear Duncan's voice, deep and teasing, and see his lowering brows and charming smile. They talked of poetry and played a game of chess together, while rain drummed outside. The fire burned, crackling on the hearth. Fire burned within him, a sharp flare of passion, and then a sweet loosening of limbs. He could feel the touch of Duncan's hand, strong and warm within his own.

Then the hand was softer and smaller, and the brown eyes that looked into his weren't Duncan's anymore.

"Methos," Amanda said gently. "Are you awake?"

"What? Yes, why—" He looked around the room, but Cassandra and Karla weren't there. The shadows had changed, and he was lying down.

"You went deep," Amanda told him as he quickly sat up. "Cassandra and I eased you into a dream state and put the crystal away two hours ago."

And he'd stayed lost in a dream of a memory from years before. Methos took a shuddering breath, reminding himself of what was real and what was not. He wanted to weep again. "I was dreaming of Duncan," he told Amanda.

"I do that too," she whispered and then she kissed him, her tears mingling with his own.

She was warm and soft and real, and he clung to her. The fire rose hot between them, and they stripped off each others' clothes then tried to burn away their despair with fierce need.

After, she laid her head on his shoulder and held tight to his hand. Methos lay on his back with his other hand behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.

Cassandra's ceiling. He and Amanda had just had sex in Cassandra's bedroom. He turned his head from side to side, seeing the sturdy legs of a dresser and a dust ball under the desk. Her room looked different from this vantage point of six inches off the floor.

"Cassandra said we could have the room," Amanda said, sounding sleepy. "But she did ask that we not use her bed."

"This was her idea?" Methos asked, surprised enough to ask a question that he immediately regretted.

Sure enough, Amanda sat up, eyes narrowed. "She's not my pimp, Methos."

And Amanda wasn't a whore (not now, anyway, and never with him). But sex was seldom free; you paid for it one way or another. Even though Cassandra might not have left specific instructions or made suggestions today, he knew those three women were "managing" him. Amanda had been charmingly affectionate these last few days.

Amanda sniffed and turned her back as she reached for her clothes. He sat up and put his hands lightly on her shoulders, then kissed the back of her neck, just to the left of her spine. He knew how to manage her, too. "I'm sorry, Amanda. Cassandra's… well…" He dropped that approach; talking about one woman in front of another (especially when she was naked) was never wise. "I'm glad you stayed with me, and that you're here with me now," he said.

Amanda didn't turn to him, but she relaxed under his hands. "I'm your monitor, Methos. I know what you're feeling." She drew a trembling breath. "I can feel some of what you're feeling."

Damn. Cassandra wasn't the only one in his head. "I didn't realize."

"I miss him, too." Amanda's words were ragged, and she was crying again.

Methos turned her as he pulled her to him, and they clung to each other again, swaying gently in a tight embrace. "I know, little cat," he told her, an old pillow-name between them. "I know." Her presence had gone dark at the center, red instead of pink, with mottled patches of black and gray. He matched his breathing to hers, letting their quickening align.

She pulled back to look into his eyes as they joined, so that they knew what the other was feeling, and could feel some of it, too. In her, he tasted deep grief and loneliness and jagged shreds of anger and despair, all feelings he knew too well. But also determination and warmth and a deep-seated urge to offer comfort and help.

"Amanda," he named her, seeing her clearly now. The loving one.

Her fingertips traced out a gentle path along his jaw, and she named him, too: "Methos." This time, they made love to each other instead of a ghost, and they shared more smiles than tears.

* * *

"Be careful what you touch," Cassandra warned the next day.

"Right," Methos agreed. No more communing with trees. No more getting lost in the dreams. Addicting, Cassandra had called the memoryscape. A drug. One boy, she had told him during dinner last night, had never woken again.

"The meadow is recent memories," she said. "The farther away, the longer ago."

"So I should head for the mountains to find my early memories."

"Yes, and I'll be nearby," she said. "Wherever you go."

"Right," he said again then added, "Thanks." For the fourth day in a row, Methos laid his fingertips on a crystal then closed his eyes. The meadow of wildflowers and grasses stretched in every direction. No sun shone, but he had a shadow: Cassandra by his side. The mountains ringed him all around. He picked out the tallest peak and steered toward it, staying away from the trees.

He pushed the grasses aside, and their seedheads brushed his shoulders. After a time, the flowers disappeared and the grasses became shorter and sparser. Frost-flattened stalks crunched under his feet. No path led the way; no one had been here in years. He avoided the trees. He trudged up and down small hummocks, but overall, he was heading down. A wide marshy floodplain lay between him and the mountains.

Methos tried imagining himself already at the peak, hoping for more that of the dream-teleporting, but the mountains stayed in the distance. When he reached the plain, the ground felt softer, wetter. Streamlets meandered everywhere, and hundreds of small pools made dark polka dots amid the lush green grass. A few stumps of blackened trees poked up here and there.

He walked easily across the plain, jumping a streamlet from time to time. He breathed deeply, enjoying the clean air, soft with the scent of green. But no gnats or flies. He realized he hadn't seen a single animal in his memory, only plants.

He caught a whiff of woodsmoke, and then he tripped, probably on a root or a bit of slippery mud. His hands went out to catch himself and he was in the water, the streamlet icy cold on his hands and knees. Either the water was rising or he was sinking, and mud sucked down on his hands and feet while the water lapped at his chest and licked at his mouth and nose. He tried to breathe and swallowed black water instead, it rose that fast, and then he was drowning, in over his head, no way up and no way out from the deep pool.

In the whirling dimness, someone was screaming and someone was laughing, and he tasted hot blood and hair. A pair of hands clutched as his ankle, dragging him down, fingernails digging down to the bone. He kicked frantically, trying to free himself, trying swim up to the air, wherever that was. "Out, out, out," a voice was chanting. The clutching hands scraped flesh off his calf, leaving burning stripes along his shinbone. Sharp teeth bit off his toes, one by one, crunching on the bones and swallowing with a slobbering growl.

He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't move, and the voice gibbered, high and screaming, close to his ear: "Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?" The eager hands patted him all over, searching for a way in, and blood was draining out of the holes where his toes had been. His fingers had gone, too.

Soft mud cocooned him, the water had all drained away, but he still couldn't escape. He gagged on the stink of burning flesh and knew with sick horror that it was his own. His hands and feet and arms and legs were gone, his horrific wounds cauterized. He was just a stump, a torso with only his head attached, a helpless worm of a man, wriggling in the mud.

"Mine, mine, mine," the voice crooned, and a soft, cold tongue slowly licked his cock from base to tip, leaving him aching and hard.

"No," he wanted to say, to scream, but he had no tongue and no eyes and no ears, only bloody holes, and the pair of eager hands stroked him, soft and gentle, teasing and rubbing, until his bloody burned torso convulsed in pathetic twitches. And all the while, laughter battered him, cruel and cold.

Finally the lightning came, great jagged shards of blue-white fire. It splintered inside his brain and screamed along his missing arms and legs, searing his world to black and smoking ash, and draining what was left of his life blood. The cold seeped in, its frigid water rising higher, and he was back in the pool, sinking and helpless and drowning, and he couldn't move he couldn't see he couldn't scream and he was…

… he was on his back, gasping, breathing air instead of water. His heart hammered his ribs, and he tasted blood. A gentle hand patted his, and he lashed out in panic and fear, striking soft flesh and hard bone. Someone was yelling, but he had hands again and he had arms, and that meant he could kill. He went for the throat, all his fingers tightening around that fragile column of bone and blood, and his thumbs digging in.

Until the world exploded in darkness and crimson stars. He slumped sideways, helpless and twitching but alive. He was alive. He clung to that as the darkness slowly melted and the world became gray. And blue. He could see. And he had all his fingers and his toes. And his nose and ears.

He sat up carefully, his head aching. When he touched his scalp, his fingers found warm blood. Nearby stood Karla, watchful and alert, the dagger she'd been sharpening held hilt down, clearly ready to pound him once more should he try again to strangle someone. Amanda crouched by the fireplace, wiping at the blood from her nose. As he watched, the bruises on her neck faded away.

Cassandra was on her hand and knees near the southern window, her back heaving as she vomited on the floor.

Methos put his head between his knees and desperately closed his eyes.

* * *

"I'm sorry," he told Amanda that evening in the garden, after he'd gone running and showered and then ridden Mwezi across the land. He'd tried eating, only to give up after a few bites. Even the beer had tasted foul.

"I heal," she said with a shrug, though her smile was strained. "Bad dream?"

"Bad memory," he answered. Though not one of his. Each of those pools he'd seen in the floodplain was a quickening—the dark waters held the memories that poured out when he chopped off a head.

For the pool he'd fallen in (or maybe been dragged to?), he didn't remember the face and he'd never heard the name, but he remembered the man. Methos and his brothers had taken many heads during the millennia they rode together, and sometimes they liked to play.

Kronos had killed the young immortal in a duel and then dragged him to their camp, like a mother cat bringing her kittens a mouse. Caspian had been hungry, and he'd sliced off each finger and toe, and then the ears and the nose. After that, Methos had been curious about how much an immortal could stand. At his suggestion, Silas had cut off the legs and Kronos the arms, and Methos had cauterized the stumps with the flat of a blade. The man had died a few times but always revived. He'd screamed a lot when Caspian dug out his eyeballs, so Silas had cut out his tongue. Then Kronos had got to giggling and used the bloody slab of flesh to stroke the one appendage they'd left attached. They'd all been amazed to find the man's cock still worked, and then they'd each wanted to try.

But even that got dull, and the moaning had been annoying, so Methos had chopped off the man's head and taken his quickening. And then he'd forgotten it all.

He'd never thought that one day he'd get to remember it—relive it—from the other side. Methos shuddered and tried not to gag.

"We pulled you both out as quickly as we could," Amanda told him. "You were only in distress for a few seconds."

Methos stared up at the darkening sky. "It felt longer." And that immortal had wanted _out. _He'd been clawing his way up out of the pool before the horrific death-memory had taken hold. Which meant there were not only six thousand years of his own memories to contend with, but hundreds of other minds, too.

Karla walked through the gateway and strode toward them, her face calm and each step precise. Her boots crunched on the gravel of the garden path. She came to a stop two paces away. "Cassandra asked me to tell you that she needs to take a break from the sessions."

"No argument here," Methos replied fervently.

"She also said she doesn't want to see you for a while."

Not a surprise. He wasn't keen on seeing himself right now. "How long?"

"She said a few days, but I'd give her a whole nine." A look of concern flickered in Karla's eyes, before they went back to their usual steady gaze. "She's … distressed."

He'd noticed. The vomiting was a bit of a clue. "Would you tell Cassandra I'm sorry?" Methos asked.

"For what?"

"A thousand things."

* * *

He and Amanda took a trip to Madagascar, where they could lie on the beach and go exploring in the hills. These mountains, he could reach.

Unlike the ones in his mind. "I can't get across the floodplain," he told Cassandra six days after he had returned to the school and gone back to looking in his memories for the key. Each time, he'd fallen into a pool. None of the death-memories was pleasant, but most were simple battle wounds. And a quickening, of course, but Amanda would yank him out before he felt all the lifeblood drain away. Cassandra was still joining him as a shadow in his dreamland, but she was keeping her distance now.

"Can you build a bridge?" Amanda suggested, her needles clicking above a swath of purple and gray.

Karla squinted down the length of her blade. "Or fly?" She set the dagger on the table and reached for the polishing cloth.

"No." He'd tried. He could remember the Horsemen days when he was awake, and he had dreams sometimes of his early days. But when he'd taken the name Adam and started a new life, he'd walled off the Horseman and compartmentalized his past. Now everything older than twenty-five hundred years was guarded by legions of the watery undead, and when he used the crystal he couldn't get through. He'd built a rather cunning barrier, if he did say so himself. To get back to what he'd been, he'd have to walk among those he had slain. But that meant whatever he'd been before his Horsemen days was behind the barrier, too.

Methos interlaced his fingers and straightened his arms, feeling the stretch in the muscles of his shoulders and chest and back. Then he bent his fingers back to the point of pain. There had to be another way through.

Amanda's knitting clicked on. Karla began testing her dagger on a piece of fruit, and offered bits to Cassandra on the tip of the blade. Methos shook his arms to loosen them then went to sit at the table.

Cassandra finished the last bite and wiped her hands clean then folded the napkin neatly and set it down. "I have memories of you from nearly four thousand years ago."

"No," he said immediately, knowing what she was going to suggest.

Amanda didn't. "What?" she asked Cassandra.

"If I take him back to my memories, perhaps he can jump to his," Cassandra explained. "And from there, maybe he can reach even earlier times."

"No," he repeated. He didn't want to revisit that time, and he sure as hell didn't want to remind her.

"We could—"

"No."

* * *

Ten days later, he still hadn't gotten past the quickening pools. The last death had been of a four-year-old. It wasn't just a floodplain of memory; it was a minefield. "Are we sure this is what we need to be doing?" he asked, pacing between two windows. "Rummaging in my memory could be a complete a waste of time."

"While you and Amanda were traveling, Karla and I scried again," Cassandra said as she sat near the fireplace with her mending on her knee. "We agree; accessing your early memories is the right approach."

"A perilous approach," he muttered. "Am I going to have to fall in every single pool before I can get through?"

"How many are there?"

He flipped his hand in irritation. "Who counts?" Cassandra said nothing as her needle flashed in and out of cloth, and he realized that she knew exactly how many heads she had taken. She probably even remembered all their names. "Too many," Methos said.

"I could try to help," she offered.

He stopped his pacing and came to sit near her. "Neither of us wants to go anywhere near that time."

"True. But not every moment between us was bad, Methos," Cassandra reminded him. "I could take us to one of those." She looked out the eastern window, where thunderclouds massed high. "Perhaps the time when it rained…"

"Ki-e-nida," he named her softly, a remnant of those rare good times. She turned to him, her eyes old with knowing and young with hope, and she offered him her hand. He took it carefully, not to shake or to hold, but to pay homage to. This could not be easy for her. He bowed, pressing his forehead against the back of her hand. "Thank you."

* * *

To increase his perception, they used the whole orb instead of a single crystal, and he practiced by taking short walks in the recent days of Cassandra's memory. Her memory was a landscape, too—a large and carefully tended garden next to an orchard behind low walls. At his back stood immense trees, a forest primeval. In front of him—no matter which way he turned—reared the perfect cone of a distant volcano, sending up lazy wisps of steam, sharp-edged against hazy white sky.

"There's an ocean, too," she told him, when they came out of it. "And sandy beaches and rocky cliffs, a swamp and a cave. A grassland, rather like yours." She took a deep breath. "And a desert of sand."

Their intended destination. But not just yet.

They chose events both of them had experienced, and when she found her memory of it, he summoned his. Wildflowers began to appear. After four days of strolling among the lettuces and strawberries and a few trips into the woods, he carried a wildflower back to his own memory, and he found himself in the center of his familiar grassy field. He stepped back and forth between their memoryscapes a few dozen times.

That night at dinner, she said, "I think we're ready."

"You're the expert." He was ready to get it over with, if not exactly feeling prepared.

"We have to move on." She leaned forward, serious and intense, and he prepared himself for more doomsday words or another harangue about the Game. Instead, she confided, "My vegetable beds look like they're sprouting weeds."

As humor went, it wasn't much, but as Cassandra went, it was huge. And they needed it. So he laughed aloud and she smiled, and that was how they started their trip into the Horseman days.

The next morning, he linked with Amanda while Cassandra linked with Karla. When the monitoring was set, he and Cassandra used the orb to go walking in her memories.

It took no time, not that he could tell; it never did. In the complete dark, he saw nothing, but he could taste dust, and his bare toes dug into cold sand. He heard Cassandra walking next to him, heavy water skins gurgling with each stride. He stopped and looked up, and then he could see: stars shimmering as bright as crushed diamonds on black velvet, as good as any view from space. It didn't look like rain.

She had kept on walking, and he could see her, just a few paces ahead: hair frizzy instead of combed, a tunic sewn of skins, feet bare, and a woven belt of white and black wool. He was wearing leather leggings and a necklace of finger bones. His single braid of hair brushed the middle of his shoulder blades.

Cassandra had often combed his hair for him in the morning. Both of them still naked from bed, she would kneel behind him, her breath warm upon his skin and her hands gentle in his hair, her nipples occasionally grazing the skin of his back, an erotic start to his day. Sometimes he would pull her hands to his lap, sometimes he would pull her head around, or put her on her back again.

Once, towards the end, he had braided her hair.

Methos touched his face, glad to find no stiffness of paint. He caught up to her and asked, "Why do you remember this night?" for she'd fetched the water all the time.

"I remember that," she said, pointing up.

A meteorite was screaming down from the heavens, leaving a ghostly trail of purple behind. He watched it as it fell, saw the puff of sand where it hit. They ran to it and found a glowing red ember surrounded by tiny bits of glass. She poured water on it until it was cool enough to carry, then she tucked the stone into her pouch. "Now to find something of yours," she said.

Dawn was arriving, and as they approached the camp, goats lifted their heads and stared with yellow black-barred eyes. He didn't remember that many animals. She greeted each one by name.

The tents were taller than he remembered, and the horses were huge. The camp was quiet, with only animals and slaves. She'd picked a memory when the Horsemen had gone on a raid.

Methos followed her into the tent—his tent, it had been, so very long ago. But different somehow. Items seemed too big, too bright, and some he didn't recognize. When he had ever hung plants from the ceiling? And what was that tacked to the center pole?

He stepped forward, his attention on that bright strip of unfinished cloth. The weaving had colors of dusty black and garish yellow and red, but in no pattern that he could see. The tension was uneven and the threads lumpy. Some even had knots tied in them, and at least a hundred small beads made of bone or shell or stone had been attached any which way.

"That's mine," Cassandra told him. "Find something of your own to take a memory from."

"Right." That was why he had come. But as he turned, the loose threads of the unfinished weaving caught on his sleeve, and he reached to untangle himself.

"Stop!" she ordered, reaching for it, but her hand bumped his, and their fingers met on a small bead drilled from bone. And he fell—

—she fell—

—I fell into nothingness, a red darkness, a cessation of sound.

Light returns slowly, and with it the soft rasp of sand blown by the wind. I am healed again, breathing again, but pain slices through my memories, white-hot and blood-red. The half-faced demon is already on top of me, his hands warm and gentle around my neck, his thumbs stroking the underside of my chin. He has pushed a musty rag into my mouth, tied me by my wrists and ankles, and then pulled my arms and legs wide. I am naked, bound, and helpless beneath him, and he smiles lazy and cruel as he stares into my eyes.

My terror of earlier today has already congealed into dread, for I know what is coming. No one will come to my aid. My people are dead, butchered in front of me. I do not know if the blood I can still taste is my father's or my own. And though I breathe, I too am dead.

I have no tribe, no home, no name. I am nothing. I am no one. Only this morning I was a healer and a priestess, sworn to the Lady of the Stars, she of the sand and wind, she of the endless sky, the goddess of my people, the protectress of my tribe.

But the Lady abandoned us, or maybe the demons killed her too. She did not scour the land and strip the flesh from their bones with screaming sand, not even when they slaughtered everyone in my village. She did not strike this half-faced demon with sky fire, not even when he touched me, as no man is ever allowed to touch her priestess. She did not come when I begged her to kill me, not even as he raped me. She must be dead.

And I am dead, for she who I was is gone. Yet my body survives, for the demon calls it back from blessed darkness and will not let it go.

He is touching me, breathing on me. His fingertip traces a slow and deliberate path across my eyebrow and down my hairline, around the curve of my ear.

I shudder as my skin all down that side suddenly tingles. He laughs again, soft and low, then presses his lips on the skin of my throat and licks his way toward my ear.

His tongue feels like a warm slug slithering over my neck. I heave upward desperately, trying to break free, but he is too heavy and I am bound, and then his hands are around my throat, his thumbs pressing down on my windpipe and making me gag.

"I will kill you," he says, as he had said to me earlier, "as many times as it takes to tame you." Then, staring into my eyes, he slowly starts to squeeze.

I can't swallow, can't breathe, and the red mist is crawling into my eyes. My body thrashes back and forth, like a rabbit frantically kicking in a snare.

"Go on," he urges. "Squirm." His thigh slides between my open legs, pressing hard, and he rubs his chest back and forth against my naked breasts. "I like that." He is smiling again, and his hands relax, though they still encircle my throat.

I breathe in rapidly through my nose, as much air as I can, but other than that, I lie still. My pulse beats against the roughness of his thumbs. His weight presses me down, flattens me, crushes me. I cannot draw a good breath. I can smell him though: horse and leather and sour sweat and fresh lust. He has already raped me twice today, maybe more while my body was dead. And now it begins again. I am empty, I am dead, I remind myself. I am not here.

But I feel it when he hits me, a slap across the face that rocks my head to the side and sets my cheek aflame. I glare at him but keep my body still, and he slaps me on the other side. I feel a trickle of blood along my cheek, and my lip burns.

His moist slug of a tongue licks my blood away, making my stomach churn. Where his lips touch me, tiny sharp flowers bloom, a horrifying mix of pleasure and pain. My heart beats frantically against my ribs, like a bird caught within the hunter's hands.

His hot breath flows into my ear as he whispers. "Move."

For answer, I turn my head away. I am not here, I repeat desperately in my mind. I feel nothing. I am dead.

This time, he uses his fists. Between each blow, he licks away my blood, carving a thin trail of pleasure into my skin, giving me time to wonder where the next explosion of pain will land. He leaves me no place to hide, no way to pretend, and when I begin to cry, he licks away my tears.

Get off, get off, get off! I want to scream at this even more hideous violation, but I have no voice, and he would not care. I am nothing to him.

I am nothing to myself. I am no one anymore.

I close my eyes so I cannot see, and tell myself again that I am not here. But still I feel, and between my legs, his fingers dance and tease, stroking and tormenting, stoking a fire different than pain. Then he is prodding me, pushing himself into me, an intimate invasion.

I do not move. I am dead. I am not here. I will not move.

But when his fingers tighten around my throat, my body betrays me by straining against his and thrashing desperately. "Good," he says, grunting away while I gasp for air. "Yes. Move." When the roaring beats against my ears and I feel myself sliding into darkness, he loosens his grip and lets me breathe.

When I recover, he cuts off my air again, just enough to make my body join his in this brutal dance of suffocation and rape and pain, again and again and again. And all the while his gold-flecked eyes–-intense and measuring and alight with vicious curiosity—stare into mine.

One day, I promise myself, I will pierce those eyes with needles made of bone.

When he finishes his humping, I lie utterly still. I am not here. I feel nothing. I am dead. "Stubborn bitch," he names me, and then he reaches for his knife and stabs me in the heart. This pain, I welcome. This time, maybe I can truly die. A red darkness eats into my eyes, and shards of fire rip me open from...

... from the inside. Methos woke to a darkness tinged with red and a brutal blossoming of pain. A dagger had slid in neatly, just beneath his ribs.

"Cassandra!" Amanda was calling, her voice sharp with sudden alarm.

Cassandra was close enough to kiss, looking directly into his eyes. He could not move, and her hand held tight to the dagger's hilt, slippery with his heart's blood.

"No," he tried to say, but got only spittle. The tip sliced back and forth as she twisted the blade, and he gagged on pain. Deeper still sliced the remembered swirl of horror, humiliation, terror, and disgust, a maelstrom of emotion that dragged him under and left him drowning, writhing in pain and helpless rage.

She smiled, lazy and cruel, her eyes alight with measured brutality and vicious satisfaction, and she pushed the dagger deeper in. She stared into his eyes until he died.

When Methos revived, Cassandra was gone. His shirt was sticky with congealing blood. Karla was sitting in her usual spot at the low table, cleaning his blood from her dagger. From the chair near the fireplace, Amanda looked up from her knitting to comment dryly, "That went well."

"Gods below," Methos muttered as he hauled himself to a seated position. His chest ached, and mouth tasted like the floor of a horse's stall on a long sea voyage. His throat hurt, and he tried to spit but got nothing, so he groped about one handed on the table top for his stone-cold tea. He sucked that down then stood and poured himself another and drank that, too. Losing blood always made him thirsty.

Then he turned to Karla. "How the hell could you let Cassandra get to your dagger?" he demanded. "You were her monitor; couldn't you tell she—" He stopped, for Karla had raised an eyebrow. "You knew," he realized.

Karla shrugged, an epitome of passive aggressiveness.

"Amanda?" he asked next, the name brittle with annoyance. Besides calling to Cassandra, Amanda had done nothing to come to his aid.

Her needles clicked on. "You heal."

She didn't say "and you deserve it" but he heard it all the same. And, he had to admit, it was true. Because of the Game, they all had reason to be angry with him, and Cassandra had a thousand reasons more. He'd just experienced one of them through her eyes. And her body.

A shudder of sickening revulsion gripped his spine and shook him. Methos breathed out and tried to let it flow away, as he'd done many times with his own experiences and memories of being raped. It didn't work. Cassandra's memory of that rape shimmered with color and overflowed with sound and sensation, and it had embedded itself in his brain, clear and real and sharp enough to slice down to the bone.

His throat burned. His skin crawled. He could still hear the soft laughter and the brutal commands—_his_ laughter and _his_ commands—still taste the dust and blood, smell the sweat and fear and rut. He could sense the weight of a body pressing on him, and feel the invader inside. He could see those mocking eyes, staring into his own.

The emotions still roiled within him: fury and terror and despair. Into those, he spliced his own guilt and shame. For he was the rapist in that memory, and he was the one who had shattered her world. All he remembered from that day was acquiring a new captive to tame and deciding to have some fun along the way.

"Cassandra has been angry with you for a very long time," Karla said as she examined the dagger. She frowned slightly then scrubbed at a spot of blood near the handle. "It will be better between you two now."

Methos knew otherwise. For when he looked at his hands, he could feel them tightening around his own throat. When he got back to his room and showered, he found himself scouring his skin until the blood ran, trying to get clean. Even after washing, he couldn't get away from his own scent. When he tried to sleep, the nightmares came.

In the morning, when he looked into a mirror, he felt the urge to plunge needles into his own eyes.

* * *

_To be continued..._


	6. 2b Haunts: coming of winter

**The coming of the winter**

* * *

In the morning, Cassandra decided not to go to the dining hall. Her hunger been blasted by fury, terror, grief, and exhaustion. For the first time in centuries, she'd had nightmares of the Horsemen, and she wanted to kill. Instead, she did yoga and meditation then sat down to write. Methos deserved an explanation and an apology.

She had finished the first paragraph and was considering the second when a student knocked on her door to deliver a basket of fruit. Cassandra stared down at the peace offering, whose card read "I am so sorry. M."

It seemed she didn't need to write the explanation after all. When she had touched her memory, Methos must have found his own memory of that same event, just as they'd been practicing. She wondered if his remorse for raping her was tainted with pleasure, as was her remorse for killing him.

Cassandra abandoned the letter and instead wrote a quick note. She gave it to the student and took the basket into her room. The orange and the lemon glowed golden and yellow against the light and dark greens of the passionfuit and the mango, all carefully arranged on a bed of dried grass. Each fruit was unblemished, perfect and smooth.

When she had been his slave, she had picked out the best fruit for him, waited while he ate, brought him water and wine, and thought herself blessed if he so much as glanced her way.

She put his card in the recycler. Then she took the basket down the hall and gave the fruit away.

* * *

"She sent you this," the girl said to Methos, handing him a note that read "_Thank you for the gift. I overreacted yesterday, and I'm sorry, too. C." _

Good. They might still both overreact, or have nightmares or flashbacks, but at least Cassandra was capable of being rational. He hoped that lasted. Methos thanked the girl then went to the stables. He needed to ride.

Mwezi took him far afield with exhilarating gallops and steady trots. They looped around and crossed the creek, and when he could see the school again, Methos got off and walked. They both needed to cool down.

Amanda was waiting at the stables, and she greeted him with a cheerful smile. She helped to put away the tack and brush the horse, and then climbed into the hayloft to fetch more hay. "Could you give me a hand?" she called down.

Methos climbed up, where he wasn't surprised to find that Amanda wanted a hand in getting out of her clothes. She was happy to help him out of his.

He was happy, too, and getting happier, until he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Above the spicy scent of hay lay scents of dust and sweat, horse and leather, and his own increasing arousal.

Suddenly, he couldn't breathe, couldn't move, and he choked and clawed at his throat in a panic, desperate for air.

Amanda immediately stepped back and away. "What's wrong?"

He swallowed then wished he hadn't. It wasn't real pain, it couldn't be. He hadn't been injured and even if he had, he would have healed. But Cassandra's memory was his now, and the phantom pain was probably going to haunt him for a while. Especially when triggered by this specific combination of smells.

"I had to sneeze," he told Amanda, and while she didn't look like she believed him, she didn't challenge the lie. "It's dusty here." No more rolls in the hay for him. "My room?"

"Or mine," she offered generously.

"Good idea. Eat first?" he suggested. He hadn't been very hungry at breakfast, but he thought he could eat now. Amanda stepped forward to help him readjust his clothes while he did the same for her, and then they left the stable hand-in-hand.

But at the dining hall, one of the students dropped her plate when she saw him, then backed away in white-faced terror, her hands going to her throat as she repeated, "No, no, no," the words rising from a whisper to an all-out scream.

He'd heard that type of protest before. He used to find it funny, ages ago.

Heads whipped around to stare, and the headmistress and two of the teachers were converging on the girl. No one seemed unduly alarmed; adolescents with burgeoning psychic powers tended to have the odd episode or two. But the headmistress was looking at him instead of at the girl, and Methos put down his own plate and quickly left the room.

It was time to go.

* * *

"Headmistress Uldane is waiting for you," the receptionist said to Cassandra. The tone suggested the headmistress had been waiting for a while, even though Cassandra had left her room as soon as the summons had arrived.

"Thank you," Cassandra said then walked into the office of the headmistress of Sunearth school. Uldane had decorated the room with pictures of birds. Cassandra had preferred flowers during the times this office had been hers.

Uldane was seated behind the large desk at the far end of the room, instead of in the more comfortable chairs in the window alcove. This was to be an audience, not their usual conversation. Accordingly, Cassandra sat in the petitioner's chair, facing Uldane across the bare expanse of polished bobinga wood. Then Cassandra waited, for Uldane was making notes on a tablet and pointedly ignoring her. Not just an audience, then, but a reprimand, probably for cancelling classes yet again.

Cassandra wasn't looking forward to that, but she knew it was justified, and it was also good for her. Being an employee instead of always the employer kept her humble … and sane. Though it was a bit odd to say "yes, ma'am" to a girl she had taught to read fifty years ago.

Though Uldane had left girlhood long ago. Her once-dark hair was silver now, cut short at the sides and braided down the back. She was resplendent in the traditional purple surcoat of Sunearth's headmistress. Golden suns and verdant earths danced along the hems, and a blue and green earth outlined in golden rays shone at the breast and on the back.

"I hear you cancelled all your classes for today and tomorrow," Uldane remarked, still not looking up. "The proctrix suggested that you might benefit from the care of a physician, since you have been 'taken ill' several times this season." She added dryly, "I said I would mention that to you."

"I could teach tomorrow, Headmistress," Cassandra offered, using the title as a clear acknowledgment of Uldane's authority.

"I am glad to hear it." Uldane made one more mark on her tablet then set it aside, finally looking at Cassandra. "How is the research project into retrieving immortal memories going?"

So that was what this meeting was really about. "We've made some progress."

"In killing?" she asked with a touch of tartness. "The laundress shared her concerns."

They should have washed all those towels by hand. "That was an accident."

"Ah." Uldane's smile stretched thin. "And of course no one died."

"Not permanently. We're all fine."

"Even after recovering a memory of being raped and strangled and dying over and over again?"

Cassandra set her expression to blandness and strengthened her shields. Uldane's talents as an empath had been bred into her for eight generations from five different ancestral lines. The chronicles were no longer that detailed (Cassandra had deleted the information herself), and she'd never shared that history with Uldane. So how—

"A student experienced a vision yesterday morning," Uldane explained. "Psychic echoes and flashes, all jumbled but very vivid."

Cassandra didn't need to manufacture a sympathetic wince; she knew first-hand what the girl had felt. Cassandra didn't try to hide it, either; Uldane would be concerned by indifference. Besides, Cassandra was very concerned. "That shouldn't have happened. I check the wards of the tower before every session, and they were at full strength yesterday."

"They weren't strong enough for Viyar." Uldane sounded both rueful and proud.

Cassandra recognized the name. Viyar, age fourteen, empath and telepath, talents manifested one year ago, rated psi-ten and tagged as an alpha. Her 3G consanguinal group contained seven empaths and three telepaths, including the headmistress herself. Uldane was Viyar's great-aunt and distant cousin in a few different ways.

Yet even an alpha-ten shouldn't be able to breach the tower wards. Unless… "We used the whole orb yesterday, instead of a single crystal," Cassandra told Uldane. "Perhaps that broadcast the memories or damaged the wards. I didn't check them this morning, since we didn't meet."

"Yes, that might have done it." Uldane clicked her tongue in annoyance then shrugged. "Well, if the whole tower does need to be realigned, at least we're close to the solstice."

"Even if it's repaired, we shouldn't continue here at the school," Cassandra said. "It's not safe, not with all the students here."

"True." Uldane tapped one finger twice on the desk then offered, "Would you like to continue your project at the Haven on Lesbos? With winter coming, only the caretaker is there, and she's not sensitive."

"That would be perfect, thank you," Cassandra said. She wouldn't wish those memories on anyone. "How is Viyar doing?"

"We blurred the vision yesterday, which helped. We'll know more after the sedative wears off."

Cassandra winced again. "You've kept her sedated since yesterday morning?"

"No, only since today's midday meal. When Viyar came face to face with Methos in the dining hall, she started screaming. Then she crawled under a table to hide."

Cassandra knew the horror of that shock. Heart-pounding dread and an ache in the throat, coupled with the desperate urge to flee and the sickening knowledge that trying to run would only bring more pain. She'd hidden under tables herself. "When she wakes, I can try erasing Viyar's memory of the vision completely," Cassandra offered. She couldn't do that for herself, but so soon after implantation, with a combination of the Voice, the orb, and Viyar's own psychic sensitivity, it could still be done, and it should be done. The girl shouldn't have to carry that burden.

"Good," Uldane said. "Seeing him made it worse. Is it just a resemblance? Or is he actually the same person as in the memory?"

"He is," Cassandra said, but then corrected that to: "He was. He's changed."

"I should hope so," Uldane said promptly. "From his chronicles, I knew he had been a raider, and so brutality is not unexpected." A shudder of revulsion ran down her arms; apparently she had picked up impressions from the girl. "But that rape was sadistic."

Kronos had been the true sadist, seeking emotional and sexual fulfillment through other people's pain. Methos had been more of an experimenter, causing pain out of curiosity or the wish to control. When he got what he wanted, he stopped. Kronos had always wanted more.

Cassandra set those thoughts aside. All of the Horsemen were gone now. "He's changed," she said again.

Uldane seemed unimpressed. "No comfort to the woman he raped and beheaded. Was one of you channeling those memories from her quickening, or were you all linked?"

Cassandra did not correct Uldane's incorrect assumption. "Only me."

Now Uldane winced in sympathy. "That must have been horrific."

"Yes. It's why I killed him."

"Served him right."

Cassandra did not disagree, but it was time to move on. "I think we should leave tomorrow."

Uldane lifted an eyebrow. "And your class?"

Cassandra had forgotten about that. "I can ask Qamas to take over. She's taught it before."

"And she has covered for you other times this session."

"I'm sorry." Cassandra reached out a hand in supplication. "I know I've been distracted lately."

"It was understandable, after your lover died. But now with this project…"

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I should have taken leave."

"Yes. That would have been wise." Uldane picked up her tablet again. "I'll change your status. For how long?"

She'd given Methos a deadline of a year before she spread the word, but if they were successful in accessing the needed memories, it would take much longer to stop the Game. "Indefinite," Cassandra said.

Uldane made a note on her tablet. "Certainly. After all," she observed, "it has been nearly a century since your last sabbatical from the Sisterhood."

It didn't seem that long. But mortals didn't like to be reminded how many years went by. "Well, I've left before, and I'll be back again," Cassandra said lightly. "Once a sister—"

"—always a sister," she and Uldane finished together with a smile.

But Cassandra was an immortal, too, and that was more important now.

* * *

**Winter's Day 557 PE**

* * *

The warders had completed the ritual at sunrise on the solstice, and that morning Uldane watched as Sister Hagar, Councilor for the Watchers, stood in the center of the tower room with her eyes closed and her arms outstretched and palms upward, turning slowly sunwise. The room was a twin to Cassandra's bedroom just below it, save with eight windows instead of four. They were all closed now, shuttered tight against the morning chill.

"The lines are strong," Sister Hagar said. "The tower is well warded."

Even Uldane could feel the power humming around her, though her talents lay more with people than things. Emotions colored her world.

When Mother Laaj arrived, she paused at the threshold then walked the perimeter of the room before nodding in satisfaction. She'd done warding work years before, though precognition was her primary skill. She took a seat at the table, and Uldane and Hagar joined her there.

"The Council will be discussing immortals later today, so Hagar and I need to talk to you now," Mother Laaj began. "What's happening with Cassandra?"

"She and the other three immortals left yesterday afternoon," Uldane reported.

Hagar frowned, pulling the skin tight on her scar that ran from cheek to chin. "We wanted that project under surveillance."

"Cassandra said it was too dangerous to be near the students, and she's right, so I couldn't argue. But I offered her the Haven on Lesbos."

"Good," Mother said. "We have people there."

Uldane did not point out the obvious: The sisterhood had people nearly everywhere.

"They took the orb?" Hagar asked. "And the other talismans?"

"They did. They are making progress; they've accessed quickenings to retrieve the memories of dead people."

"Interesting," was all Mother said, but excitement flared in a vermillion spike amid blue curiosity.

"Another research project?" Uldane asked. The Sisterhood had many.

Mother carefully intertwined her fingers to make a cage of her hands. "Perhaps."

"Do you know yet what this 'key' is, Uldane?" Hagar asked.

"No, but I don't think they do, either. I do know it's ancient," Uldane offered.

"So that's why they're retrieving memories of the dead." Hagar simultaneously shrugged and shook her head, radiating dismissive pity and scorn in a swirl of red and grey. "They're looking to the past when they should be looking to the future."

"What are the projections?" Mother wanted to know.

Hagar straightened and went into reporting mode, clear and precise and blue. "It's too small a sample for statistical analysis, and because of immortality the timeline is impossible to predict, but the trend is clear. Numbers are decreasing, and replacement rate is falling, too. They still don't realize-"

"Good," Mother Laaj interrupted, obviously stopping Hagar from saying too much.

Uldane was curious, but she didn't ask. Every Sister kept secrets, and Councilors kept more.

Mother Laaj's pity was tinged with regret, reddish orange, but when she sighed, all went clear gray. "Clear out Cassandra's things from the room below, Uldane."

"She said she was coming back," Uldane said.

"It won't happen. I've seen it."

"And what has Cassandra seen?" Hagar asked.

"Not much, and nothing clearly," Mother Laaj replied. "At best, Cassandra's a level four precog, and she's erratic."

"Sports," Hagar said with another shrug. "Unreliable and unpredictable."

Breeding wasn't everything. "Cassandra's a priestess of the innermost circle," Uldane reminded them. "She's been a member of the Sisterhood for thousands of years, and she founded this school, and hundreds more."

Mother Laaj reached over to touch Uldane's hand. "She was your teacher."

"Since I was five. For many things." Music and dance and building psychic shields, teaching and weaving and making pies, how to lead and how to run a school.

"She was my teacher, too," Mother Laaj said. "She has taught thousands of us through the years, and made us what we are. The Sisterhood will always honor her for that. Cassandra is our mother." She sighed again, the violet of sorrow making grooves in her eyes. "But she is not coming home."

Uldane did not argue, but she wasn't ready to believe. Even psi-ten precogs could be wrong, and Mother Laaj was only a psi-eight.

"So we Watch her." Hagar seemed content with that. "Just like the others."

"Of course."

The words were simple; the layers of emotion were not. In Mother Laaj, Uldane spotted reservation and caution woven into the threads of that decision.

It seemed that Hagar had spotted something, too, for alertness flared bright orange. "You're not—"

Mother Laaj pushed back her chair and stood. "The Council will decide."


	7. 2c Haunts: colder than the sea

**Colder than the sea**

* * *

The Sisterhood's Haven was a white stone villa perched atop a cliff on the island of Lesbos, looking out over the wine-dark sea, and Methos had the place to himself. At first light, Karla and Cassandra had gone running in the hills to explore. When the shops opened, Amanda and the housekeeper had left to buy food in the village.

In the kitchen, Methos kneaded the bread dough, shaped it into loaves, and set it to rise near the stove. Then he took the orb downstairs to his bedroom and shut the door. He pulled the curtains shut, too, hiding the magnificent view. He took off his shoes, sat cross-legged on the bed, and put the orb on his pillow. In the dimness it glimmered whitely, like mother-of-pearl.

He'd done this a few times before, used the orb to access his own memory. Usually Karla or Amanda was nearby. But there'd never been any problems, and he didn't expect any today. He wasn't going to go anywhere. He just wanted to see.

Methos laid his fingertips on the orb and aligned his quickening with the energy inside. Three quick breaths and one long and slow, and there … yes … that was the door. Four slabs of weathered wood, no handle, no key, just … push then step … and he was in the meadow of his mind.

He turned slowly, looking for the memory that wasn't his. The trees were still there, as were the ring of distant mountains and the marsh with its many pools of water, dark and still. Flowers bloomed around him, and grasses rippled down the hill. All of that was familiar.

Except for the vine. It looked like a morning glory, with heart-shaped leaves and delicate tendrils, and a flower of crimson and black and gold. The vine started near his feet and crept along the ground, twining up and around the sturdy stalk of another flower.

In the two days since he and Cassandra had gone into the Horsemen tent, Methos had not slept well. He wasn't interested in eating, either. Or sex. Or much of anything, really.

Cassandra's memory didn't belong here.

He reached down and plucked it out. The flower curled in on itself, shriveled, and turned brown. It seemed to take no time at all. He dropped the vine, ready to leave, but one of the tendrils caught on his sleeve. When he reached to free himself, the tendril wrapped around his fingers, growing longer in no time at all. A new flower bloomed, blood red in yellow sand, and its scent was of horse and sweat and fear.

He plucked at the vine, brushing it off, becoming frantic then frenzied as more tendrils grew, from delicate to clinging to a strangling hold. His fingertips began to ooze blood, leaving red smears on the rough green. Then his arms were pinned, his legs were bound, and he couldn't move and he couldn't breathe and green fingers wrapped around his throat and slowly squeezed.

The vine was crawling over him and in him, its tendrils burrowing into his ears and nostrils, a rough branch pushing apart his lips and teeth and sliding back and forth along his tongue. Between his legs, questing roots prodded and pulled, and he writhed helplessly while the invader pushed itself inside. He tried to scream but couldn't, choking on green leaves, as the vines simultaneously crushed his limbs and pulled him apart. Flowers grew from his skin as fine roots ate into his flesh, and thicker roots coiled around his bones, cracking them open and exposing the marrow within.

In the meadow where he had stood, only a barrow remained, covered in pulsating green leaves and dotted with pustules of black and scarlet and gold.

* * *

When Methos came to, he was drenched with sweat and curled up in a tight ball on his bed, with the orb clutched in one hand. He hurled it away from him, and it cracked the mirror on the closet door. The orb rolled along the floor before bumping into the leg of the bed and coming to halt, unscathed.

"Fuck," he swore, at the orb and at himself, then rolled onto his back and stretched out his limbs, not languorously, but more to make sure they were all there. He scrubbed at his scalp with his fingers than sat up in bed with a sigh. "That went well," he muttered, quoting Amanda's observation after Cassandra had knifed him in the heart.

That vine wasn't going anywhere. But all the flowers had faded with time and eventually disappeared. Even the trees had fallen. The vine would wither, too. It just needed time.

He brushed his teeth—twice—and took a shower then dressed and went upstairs. The bread went in the oven, and he was lounging in the sitting room and reading a book when Amanda and housekeeper, a stocky woman named Nomiki, returned. Methos got to his feet then went to help Nomiki and Amanda put away food.

When Karla and Cassandra got back from their run, the four immortals gathered for a late breakfast. The dining room was the mirror image of the sitting room, but its three sets of French doors faced south-west instead of south-east. Because the villa was on a promontory, the view was still of the sea.

"We found the cave," Karla announced as they took their places at the dining table. "It's not too far, and we can use the orb there after we set the wards."

"Stronger than the wards in the tower, I hope?" Amanda asked as she passed the tea pot along.

Karla nodded. "We'll use all the talismans, and setting the wards at solar noon today will help. Solstices are good times."

Amanda picked up her tea cup but didn't drink. Cassandra was staring out to the sea, where sunshine glinted on the waves.

Winter sunshine. Today was the Winter Solstice.

Duncan's birthday.

Methos and Duncan hadn't celebrated birthdays much; the years went by so quickly, and Methos had never been one to delay giving a present. Each day—each night—was a gift to be opened immediately. Tomorrow might not come.

He poured his own tea and added honey, stirring slowly. When he looked up, he met Karla's understanding gaze. "How about a bonfire on the beach tonight?" she suggested.

Cassandra turned back from the window, saying, "A fire would be lovely," and Amanda agreed.

"Sounds good," Methos chimed in. Tonight they would all tell stories and drink too much and laugh a lot and weep a little, and he and Amanda would end up in bed. Maybe he could manage to sleep without nightmares. Maybe he and Amanda would even have sex.

"Finally," Amanda said.

She was looking at Nomiki, who had emerged from the kitchen carrying a frittata of eggs and cheese and peppers. Nomiki placed the dish on the table with downcast eyes then returned with a basket of sliced bread and a platter of fruit. They watched as she made her way to the kitchen with a slow and ponderous tread.

"She doesn't look like a Guardian," Amanda observed after the door shut. "Or a Watcher."

"The good ones never do," Methos said, taking the heel of the loaf. "But we should assume we're being watched here. And listened to. Right, Cassandra?"

"It's not unlikely."

Karla didn't slow in putting fruit on her plate, but her glance at Cassandra was keen. "Did you even think about going somewhere else?"

"Yes. But they watch us in our daily lives wherever we go, and avoiding them just makes them suspicious. As for privacy…" She waved a hand at the expanse of sea and sky through the windows. "We can go outside. Just be careful what you say in the house."

Methos was always careful about what he said, no matter where he was.

"And do," Karla added as she leaned forward and speared a slice of bread with the tip of her knife.

"I've got nothing to hide," Amanda announced archly.

Methos knew that wasn't true. But Amanda certainly wasn't shy. He spread jam on the warm bread while the conversation shifted to an innocuous discussion of birds on the island. When the meal was over, Cassandra and Karla left to set the wards on the cave, and Amanda and Methos went to gather driftwood and lay the bonfire on the beach.

"Are you all right?" Amanda asked him as they dragged a gnarled log across the sand.

"I'm fine."

"You don't seem fine."

He got hold of one end of the log, heaved mightily, and tipped it onto the pile. "I'll manage."

Amanda laid her hand on his arm. "We're here to help, you know, including Cassandra. Just ask."

He should have, before using the orb. A monitor would have been a good idea. But Cassandra was the expert on memory, and this whole project—including going to the Horseman days—was her idea. That meant cleaning up the mess was her job. "Thanks," he told Amanda with a smile. "I will."

* * *

"Too heavy?" Karla asked as Cassandra shifted her knapsack yet again.

"Too lumpy." The talismans weren't nesting neatly. "I think I'll repack it."

Karla pointed to the dark line on the hillside above them. "We're almost there."

Cassandra resigned herself to climbing the hill with the rim of the cauldron pressing into the small of her back. Karla was carrying the sword and the water.

Karla held onto the trunk of a small sapling to help get up the last few steps then reached back to gave Cassandra a hand. They scrambled up on the ledge then turned to look at the valley below. Thanks to the reforestation program and depopulation, the bare white rock had been covered by a thick blanket of green.

"So." Karla dusted off her hands then motioned to the cave. "Shall we?"

Cassandra took off the knapsack and carried it by a strap into the cave. She unpacked the talismans and set them in their places. The cord first, to mark the circle, with the jewels placed at the points of the rising and the setting of the sun and the moon. The chalice stood in the center, with the truthstone beneath it and the orb within it. She held the flute and the sickle, Karla held the wand and the sword, and together they set the wards.

The ritual called for water and blood, fire and air, silence and song. With the sickle, Cassandra caused her blood to flow, and with the swordtip Karla drew bloodrunes on the ceiling, walls, and floor. Fire next, drawn forth from the wand by Karla singing to the jewels, then Cassandra used the flute of bone to pull power from the air and spin the webs of protection around the room.

At noon, the task was done. The wards were set, and the cave was protected from both psychic energy leaking out and outsiders peering in.

They sat at the mouth of the cave, watching the golden light dance on the hills. "Drink?" Karla offered, and Cassandra took the flask. When she unstoppered it, the scent of apple schnapps rose spicy and warm. Cassandra poured a few drops on the ground, just in front of the empty niche carved into the ancient rock wall.

"Who's that for?" Karla asked, nodding at the altar.

"The head of the singing god, the voice of silvered wings."

"Orpheus washed up here?"

"So it was said." Cassandra sipped at the schnapps then handed the flask to Karla before recounting the tale from long ago. "The priestesses built the singer a shrine and called him an oracle, and people came from across the waves, eager to know what their future held. More people came and the gifts grew luxurious, so the priestesses built a temple of marble at Antissa, decorated with ivory and oryx horn and gold, then moved the head of Orpheus there. They say that Sappho used to visit him, and the two of them would sing together, in voices of silver and gold. When she kissed him, his gift of poetry became hers." Cassandra reached up to touch the empty ledge. "And everyone forgot this shrine, which has only rock and sun and wind."

"So he wasn't dead, even after he was beheaded?"

"No." Cassandra stood and stretched before picking up the knapsack. "Shall we?"

Back at the villa, Karla went inside to eat. Cassandra was hungry, too, for setting wards took energy, but first she wanted to walk on the beach. Near the shore, she gathered her hair into a loose braid and took off her shoes, so that the water could dance over her bare feet whenever a wave came in. It was cold, but it was good. She had missed the sea and the sound of the waves.

This island had been her home, many times, both long ago and in more modern times. The towns had persevered through the millennia, though many of the small villages had been abandoned in the last five hundred years. She and Karla had run past a few today. But a new temple and school had been built where the Temple of the Mother had stood, and people once more visited shrines that had been destroyed by worshippers of the jealous god.

The nearby cave was known to very few. They should be able to finish the project there, and once she had what was needed to stop the Game, then Methos could disappear. She knew he was eager to be gone.

Except today, it seemed, he was eager to see her. She watched him pick his way down the steep path on the cliff then pass the stacked driftwood and head straight for her.

He joined her near the sea's edge. He looked tired, almost worn. "Cassandra," he said with a nod.

"Methos."

They stood side by side looking out at the water, but not at each other. That suited Cassandra. She didn't want to look at him, either. She had enjoyed killing him, and she wouldn't really mind killing him again.

Just at the horizon, the distant sail of a boat moved slowly from left to right. Methos was the one to finally break the silence. "I didn't intend to go into that memory."

Cassandra didn't "go into" memories. They came after her, fearsome beasts that howled in the night and stalked her, or venomous scorpions curled up in hidden places, just waiting to strike. They used to come every night, but since spending a few decades in therapy six hundred years ago after Roland and the Horsemen were gone, the attacks had become much less frequent.

Unfortunately, reliving the rape had opened the cage, and the memories were on the prowl again. She was hoping to sleep better tonight, with the soothing sound of the waves, at least for a while. The nightmares would find her before dawn.

"I know it wasn't intentional," she said to Methos. "We both knew it was a risk."

His mouth twisted and his eyebrows flickered—sure signs of biting back an "I told you so"—though he said nothing.

"It's necessary, if we're to stop the Game," she reminded him. "And it can work. But you shouldn't touch anything of mine."

"Apparently, neither should you. Not there."

The dryness in his tone did not match the concern in his eyes. The same eyes that had coolly watched her die, over and over again. Cassandra looked away to watch the wave curl over the top of her toes. When the water receded, it left a pretty annulet of a shell.

"Some memories are safe," she explained, reaching down to pick it up. "And I know what not to touch."

"Like that weaving?" he asked.

"Like that weaving," she agreed. Ugly, misshapen, and horribly knotted, the yellow warp held her days as his slave. Each black strand was a death, each red strand a beating, each bead a rape. Cassandra looked at the fragment of shell, pierced by a predator that had rasped out the living flesh of the quivering mollusk, and then smoothed into an open circle by water and wave.

"Will Viyar be all right?" Methos asked.

Cassandra was gratified that he remembered the girl's name. "I think so." She tossed the shell back into the water. "We got to her soon, and she was receptive, so I excised the vision."

He nodded, and they watched the waves, long silver lines following each other, lapping at the same sand. "Can you excise memories, too?" Methos asked.

"They can be blurred sometimes, but not excised. Visions are surface, but memories are entwined in many layers. The body remembers, not just the mind."

His jaw flexed and his lips tightened, as if he wanted to hold back the words, but even so he asked, "What if the memory belongs to someone else?"

A dreadful stillness settled in her limbs, even as her mind scrambled to understand. When he'd sent her fruit and an apology, she'd thought he found his matching memory. But from what he'd just said, he hadn't accessed his own memory. He had lived hers.

No. Memories were private. People could read the titles, but not the book inside. Only a highly gifted telepath in tight rapport could share a memory, and Methos had no talent that way. He couldn't. He hadn't—

"I didn't…" Methos finally met her eyes. "I am so sorry," he said, repeating the words of his written apology. His words hung heavy with honest remorse and not a trace of pleasure; his face was taut with self-disgust and pain. "I didn't know."

Cassandra said nothing, did nothing, did not even breathe. This man had taken her life, her family, her freedom, her body and even her soul, but that one intimate secret, that last pathetic scrap of privacy, she had hugged tightly to herself and hidden all these centuries.

And now Methos knew. Everything. Not just the bare fact of her virginity, as if someone had told him, but everything, with intimate and repulsive precision. He had lived her memory. He knew her thoughts, her sensations, her feelings… He'd tasted her terror, her rage, her helplessness, and he had felt her body respond to his with shreds of desire. He'd stripped and violated her body millennia ago, and now he had violated her mind.

He had raped her life. She had nothing of her own. She would never be free of him.

She forced herself to blink and to breathe, but she did not move. A part of her wanted to kill him, and a part of her wanted to die.

"Cassandra?" His voice was quick with confusion and laced tight with concern.

"We're done." She turned to make for the cliff. Cassandra walked quickly, lifting her face to the pearl-grey sky. She'd walked away from him before, as he sobbed on his knees by the body of his brother. She had allowed him to live, dropped the axe and walked away.

Her fingers were curled, tense with seeking. She wanted that axe today.

Methos was coming after her, quick footsteps on the sand, and she whirled to face him, ready to kill.

He wasn't stupid. When he saw her face, he stopped three paces away and spread his arms wide, palms open and empty, a sign of peace. Then he asked, "What's wrong?"

She had been wrong. He was stupid.

"I did say I was sorry," he reminded her then added to himself, "Again."

Monumentally stupid.

"You were a woman, not a girl," he said in a pathetic attempt to explain himself. "Both in age and body."

As if that little scrap of fetishized flesh mattered. Her tribe's puberty ritual had transformed girls into women; they hadn't needed a man.

"So I didn't know," he repeated, like the incessant bleating of an anxious sheep.

"You didn't ask," she replied icily. "You took. Everything."

"Yes," he agreed, his impatience and arrogance slithering out, coating him in impervious slime. "I was a Horseman. We took. We killed, we burned, we raped, we enslaved. We were brutal and vicious, and I liked it. Yes." He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "We've been over this, Cassandra. I can't change what I was, or what I did to you and to others. I wish that I could—"

He paused, blinking at nothing, breathing out in controlled sighs, apparently in some distress, the slime scraped away to reveal raw skin. Good.

"But I can't," he finished. "Anymore than you can change what you've done in the past."

Her sins did not lessen his, and she would not let him shift the focus to her. "Does that rape feel like 'the past' to you?" she demanded.

He swallowed hard while his fingers twitched and fluttered, like a butterfly trapped in a spider's web, and she recognized the agonized haunting in his eyes. She'd seen it in her own, many times.

"Not right now," he admitted. "It's… I can't sleep. I can't focus. I'm not—" He pulled in a shuddering breath then pounded his fists together in frustration. "It's making me—"

"Crazy?" she supplied. "Unbalanced? Irrational?" People had called her all of those. They'd also labeled her hysterical and delusional, denying the reality of the experience, ignoring the reality of the pain, making her doubt her own mind. Crazy indeed.

"A little," Methos agreed warily. "How do you cope?"

"Not well, some years, as you may remember." Cassandra looked out at the ancient sea, the waves chasing each other to and fro. "Therapy helps. Eventually, the memories fade and you move on." After a century or so. With luck. "But this is more intense than I remember," she told him. "I think the orb amplified it."

"Wonderful," he muttered before staring at those waves with narrowed eyes, shoulders hunched against the wind. "What if," he said finally, "we use the orb to weaken the memory, blur it, maybe give it some time…"

There should be no "we". Her memories should be hers alone. But he had taken them, too. And as for "giving it time"… "I already have," she snapped. "Most of my life, in fact."

"Well, since you've had so much practice," he pointed out, in that cruel and lazy tone he used when his patience was gone, "you should be quicker at it now."

At his voice—at her master's command—her rage flared white-hot then burned away, leaving ashes of despair and fear. She mustn't make him angry. "Yes," she agreed. "I should." But he didn't like that; she could tell. "I'm sorry," she said immediately, lowering her gaze and standing small and quiet, waiting for whatever he decided to do.

He swore softly, and she prepared herself for the blow. But he simply called gently, "Cassandra," and then she realized what she had done. At that one sarcastic remark from him, she'd sat up and begged. If he'd told her to, she would have rolled over and spread her legs for him, well-trained bitch that she was.

And he knew that, too.

She lifted her head to meet his gaze: sympathetic, understanding, disturbed and horrified, touched by sadness and guilt. She was awash in self-disgust and rage, and she took a moment to let the worst of it drain away, remembering lessons from therapy. Her submissiveness wasn't her fault; he had beaten it into her. She had no reason to be disgusted with herself. She was not to blame. And she was not his slave anymore. "I don't want your pity, Methos."

"No," he murmured. "I suppose not." Then he offered, "How about my sincere apology?"

"What, again?" Nothing about this was funny, but both of them almost smiled. "I appreciate the offer," she forced herself to say, trying not to choke on the words, "but I'm not in the mood to hear it."

"I understand."

She didn't want him to understand. She wanted him out of her head.

"Take another break?" Methos suggested.

That was the reasonable response, to let tempers cool and memories fade then move on. "No," she told him, because while she could handle the nightmares, she would never again be a slave. She needed him gone. "We're done."


	8. 2d Haunts: by the hand and by the heart

"You can't quit," Amanda told her.

"I already have." Cassandra went to the west window in her bedroom and made sure the latch was tight. Cold air was seeping in.

Amanda leaned forward, sitting on the edge of the double bed. "What about stopping the Game?"

The Game. That bloody brutal game. "Methos started it. He should be the one to end it. I'm done."

"Cassandra—"

"No." She took her bag from the closet and dropped it next to Amanda.

Amanda watched as Cassandra emptied a drawer of its clothes and dropped them on the bed, too. Amanda didn't get out of the way. "Ever since you two visited the Horsemen camp memories, Methos hasn't been sleeping well or eating much."

Cassandra knew exactly how he felt. She could not summon a shred of sympathy for him.

Amanda flipped her hand in graceful exasperation. "He's not even interested in sex."

Good. Cassandra shoved her socks into a small empty space.

"I know what went wrong with him," Amanda said.

"He told you?" Cassandra said, each word sent forth like a tiny boat on a rising swell of fury. First he stole her memory, and then he dared to share it with-

"Not in words," Amanda said.

Cassandra made herself let the anger drain instead of cresting like a tidal wave. Then she went back to packing.

"But it's obvious," Amanda was saying. "You two relived something from the Horsemen times, then you finally got your chance to kill him, and now he's finally facing what he did."

He wasn't just facing it; he was living it. Dreaming it, too, probably. He might even have flashbacks or panic attacks. She hoped he found it hard to breathe.

"So that's his problem," Amanda concluded. "What's yours?"

Methos. Once and forever, apparently. Cassandra finished jamming the clothes in the bag and fastened it. Even though Amanda was a friend, Cassandra didn't want to share the details, so she said only, "Methos and I should never have gone near the memories of those days."

"So, you're saying that Methos was right?" Amanda seemed unnecessarily pleased.

"Yes, fine, Methos was right." Cassandra wasn't interested in keeping score. "The memories are … disturbing. I can't—" go near him, she almost said, but changed it to, "I can't go back."

"You killed him two days ago, and the four of us came all the way here, and you and Karla spent the morning warding the cave, and you decide that only now? Please." Amanda's voice dripped disbelief. "What happened on the beach?"

Cassandra didn't answer.

"Honestly," Amanda muttered. "You two…" She went to the door, but stopped there with her hand on the knob. "We have to try to stop the Game, Cassandra. For the children."

She left, and Cassandra shut the door. Firmly, if not quite a slam. She didn't know if the project would work, but she did know she couldn't work with Methos.

And she'd abandoned children before.

A few minutes later, Karla arrived, saying, "I saved you some soup, and there's a fresh pot of tea upstairs." Then she saw the packed bag. She held out one hand, a silent invitation to comfort and support and love.

Cassandra didn't take it.

Karla's eyes narrowed. "What's happened?"

Nothing, Cassandra wanted to say. To lie. The shivers returned then surged into a shudder, and Cassandra turned to the window, seeking refuge in the view of the sea and the sun.

"Cassandra?" Karla prompted from behind her.

There was no refuge. No escape. "Methos and I shared a memory."

"That was the plan," Karla pointed out.

"_A_ memory," Cassandra emphasized, swinging back around to face Karla. "My memory."

Her brows drew down, a fine dark line. "But people can't-"

"Methos can."

Her brows went up; then she leaned her back against the wall, thoughtfully regarding her boots. "Is that because he's the key, or because he's using the entire orb? Or both?"

"It doesn't matter," Cassandra said, but at Karla's nearly scandalized look, she explained, "Not to my decision. I won't go into more memories with him."

"We have to—"

"I will not open myself to him!" Cassandra cried. Not again. Never again.

Karla nodded slowly then straightened and came to her. This time when she offered her hand, Cassandra took it, a fierce and desperate grip.

With her other hand, Karla tenderly brushed back Cassandra's hair. "You did say you didn't want to do this."

"I knew I didn't want to touch his memories." Cassandra tried closing her eyes, but there was no place to hide. "I never thought he'd go into mine." She swallowed bitter rage and foul fear. She could not bear to go back to what she'd been.

"Ah," Karla said on a soft exhale then put her hand on Cassandra's shoulder and waited. Cassandra sighed then moved into the embrace, arms tight around each other. Then Karla led her to the bed, and they lay down together. Cassandra laid her head on Karla's shoulder and listened to their heartbeats, steady and strong, and she fell asleep with Karla's hand in hers.

* * *

When Cassandra woke, the light was dim and Karla was warm beside her.

"It's nearly sunset," Karla said, answering the unspoken question. "Same day."

Cassandra could have stayed there for hours, even days, but Karla said, "If Methos is the key, we need him."

"We need what he knows," Cassandra corrected, sitting up. "Maybe one of you can get it." And then he could stop the Game and pay for some of his sins.

"You know neither Amanda nor I have the power."

While it seemed that she and Methos had too much. Cassandra got off the bed.

"Maybe if we formed the circle again," Karla suggested, "with Amanda and me between you two—"

"No," Cassandra said yet again. "Methos and I are done. I need to leave."

"You need to eat," Karla corrected, swinging her legs off the bed then coming to join Cassandra near the door. "That warding wasn't simple, and I know you're hungry."

She was, almost dizzy with it, and she knew the dangers of ignoring that need. "I'll eat, but I won't eat with him."

"I'll take him a tray," Karla said. She placed a hand on Cassandra's arm. "Come."

Amanda had set a festive table, bright with candles and decorated with red ribbons. "It's just us girls tonight," she announced. "Methos decided to eat in his room, and Nomiki's gone home." Amanda poured wine and brought food, chattering of unimportant things.

Cassandra said little but ate well and drank more than she should. She thanked Amanda warmly at the end of the meal.

Amanda shrugged the compliment away, then set the cheese plate on the table and poured out the last of the wine to the three of them before leaning back in her chair with a sigh. "Karla said the cave was a shrine to Orpheus."

"Long ago." Cassandra selected a small square of goat cheese then let it crumble on her tongue, tasting garlic and salt.

"It's a horrid story," Amanda said. "Bringing his wife back from the land of the dead, only to lose her, and then the Thracian women tear him limb from limb and throw his head into the sea, and he's still not dead." She shuddered. "Imagine. You couldn't even scratch your nose. It almost makes me glad it's over for us when we lose our heads."

"It's not over." Karla stabbed an olive. "Our quickenings are inside another immortal." She chewed thoroughly and swallowed before saying, "No heaven or hell for us. Assuming, that is, that a quickening is a soul. Maybe it's just our consciousness."

"But we're not conscious," Amanda said. "Not usually."

"How do you know?" Cassandra asked.

"I store quickenings as jewels, and they're silent. Methos said the pools were quiet until they were disturbed. Karla? How about you?"

"Geodes in a cave. There's nothing happening there."

"Such pretty prisons you've made," Cassandra commented, picking up her wineglass. "And yet, you are the thieves. You stole their lives."

"And how do you store the quickening of someone you've killed?" Amanda demanded.

"A severed head in a niche in the wall." Eight of them, all told. They didn't always stay there, though. And they weren't usually quiet.

"Not much for symbolism, are you?" Karla asked.

"You mean lies?" Cassandra asked with studied innocence and deliberate insolence.

Karla glanced at the wineglass in Cassandra's hand, already empty. "You're drunk, Cassandra."

"Not yet." She stood, still steady on her feet. "Not enough." In the kitchen, she found nothing, so she went to the liquor cabinet in the sitting room.

But Methos obviously had the same idea. The cabinet doors were open, and he had already picked up a bottle. She stopped short at the door, trapped between the craving for alcohol and the fear of him, and rigid with fury at it all.

"You can have this, if you want," he offered, holding up the vodka. "I'll take something else."

"Keep it." She waited until he left the room before she went to the cabinet. The bottles didn't offer much variety, but it didn't matter. She took the ouzo, not because she liked it, but because it was mostly full. She went out onto the balcony, her fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle, a tight and reassuring grip. She still wanted an axe.

A damp wind was battering the house, and she lifted the bottle to her lips. The air burned cold, the ouzo burned hot, and Cassandra didn't care. Staring at the dark sea below, she drank it all. Then she went back inside for more.

She picked out a bottle of wine. From the kitchen, she could hear the splashing of water, and Amanda's voice saying, "Keeping Methos happy is my job; keeping Cassandra happy is yours."

"I got her to eat," Karla replied.

"And drink," Amanda pointed out.

"Like Methos." Karla's answer was precisely as sharp as Amanda's had been.

"He says it helps him sleep," Amanda said. "But…"

"They're both still upset," Karla said over the splash of water. "It will take some time."

"We may not have time. Cassandra's already packed her things."

"If Cassandra really wanted to leave," Karla said, "she'd already be gone."

Cassandra considered that statement while she sat on the floor in her bedchamber and drank the wine. She'd walked away from bad situations before. Sometimes she'd run away, abandoning everything and everyone, intent on her own survival.

Karla was right. This time, Cassandra wasn't truly panicked, and she didn't want to leave. She just wanted Methos gone. He was the one who needed to leave. She couldn't face him—

No.

Methos wasn't the problem. She didn't want to face herself.

But she had to. She wasn't going to run anymore.

Cassandra set the wine bottle near the leg of the bed then turned to face her reflection in the mirror on the closet door. She looked tired and her hair needed brushing; little wisps stuck out from the braids. Her expression was blank, even empty, save that her eyes were wary and her mouth was tight.

The look of the hunted. The haunted. The slave.

Her regression to slave mode had happened before, and likely it would happen again. Flashbacks and dreams could trigger that behavior in her, she knew, and so could some men. But she had lived as a slave, day after day and night after night for decades, under the brutal control of masters determined to tame her, and she had survived.

She sat up straighter, breathed in then out, and looked herself in the eye. "You're strong enough," she told herself. "You can survive this, too." She refused to be slave to anyone or anything: not Methos, not her memories, and not her fears.

Cassandra got to her feet. The work wasn't finished, and she needed Methos to get it done.

* * *

Methos hadn't planned on going in the water. He'd been sitting on the beach in the dark, drinking a bottle of vodka and shivering in the cold, and wondering how to clear his mind. Cassandra wouldn't help him (on the beach, she'd looked ready to kill him), and both Karla and Amanda had said they didn't know how. "I suppose we could try," Amanda had said doubtfully, but after being eaten alive by the memory-vine, Methos wasn't willing to let a novice poke around in his brain. It probably wouldn't work, and it might get worse.

Which meant he had months—maybe years or even decades—of flashbacks and sudden terrors and nightmares ahead of him. Months without real sleep. Without sex. Living hardly seemed worth the trouble.

So when the waves came in and the water crept closer, he couldn't summon the energy to move. He just sat there, drinking, and let the frigid water carry him away. He lost the bottle in the surf, his fingers too numb to hold on, and somehow he kicked off his shoes. The waves slapped him about and dragged him along, and he drowned at least once, maybe twice. He didn't know. He didn't much care.

He didn't remember getting to shore. He revived next to the bonfire, all bright dancing flames and cheerful crackles and blessed blessed warmth. Cassandra handed him a dry towel. She had one, too, and she was carefully blotting water from the long tresses coiled in her lap. Her feet were bare.

"You brought me in?" Methos asked in surprise. After her impassioned declaration earlier today and her fury at his mere presence tonight, he would never have thought she'd jump in the sea in the middle of the night to haul him ashore. Unless she just wanted to kick his corpse.

But he felt unkicked and she was being helpful, so apparently she had decided to stop overreacting to her earlier overreaction to him, and all in only a few hours' time. She was getting quicker at becoming reasonable again.

"It's good you weren't too far," Cassandra said. "That water's cold."

"I know." He remembered shivering enough to clatter his teeth before the hypothermia took hold.

"So do I." She wrung out water from her hair. "And not just from tonight."

Drowning was the act of a desperate man. Or woman. "How many times?" he asked, briskly rubbing his right calf. His feet were tinged blue with cold.

"Eight or nine, I suppose, from this island. I came here right after the Horsemen were destroyed, and at other times when I wasn't coping well. Dying stops the dreams."

Another person might find that drastic. Methos understood. The tingling of his calf was turning into needles, and he set to work rubbing his other leg and getting the blood to flow.

"Your idea earlier," she began, "about using the orb to blur that memory… We could try that."

Methos tried to hide his eager relief. "Good."

"It might not work," Cassandra warned.

"Understood." It was definitely worth a try.

"Amanda and Karla should monitor us."

"Yes, of course."

Cassandra stopped drying her hair to give him a hard stare. "You already tried. On your own."

"This morning," he admitted.

She shook her head. "Methos…"

"I wanted to see. There was just one vine."

"You didn't touch it, did you?" He didn't reply, but she read his answer in his wince and averted eyes. Cassandra shook her head again. "Not wise."

"I noticed." He ran his tongue over his teeth, once again trying to scrape out the taste and the feel of bitter leaves. His throat ached and air came hard; as if he were both choking and being strangled at the same time. "Believe me."

"Well," she said, with a click of her tongue, "we may still be able to do something." She didn't sound hopeful.

He really wanted to get a rulebook for how all this psychic-magic-witchcraft worked. Speaking of… "How did you find me? In the dark, with these currents?"

"I _looked_ for you," she said, stressing the verb. "Before I left my room. That's why I brought towels."

"Ah," he said softly. They were linked. She could always find him. "Thank you for pulling me out. I'm not…"

"Yourself," she finished. In the flickers of firelight, he saw her grim amusement and knowing pain. "You're me."

"I am what I made you," he corrected, because he had been the first to break her body and warp her mind. He needed to admit that to her.

Cassandra looked at him for a long, silent moment, not with anger or fear or rage in her eyes, but with an expression of calm thoughtfulness, even acceptance. "Yes," she agreed. "You were the master and you created the slave. But I've remade myself, just as you have. I carry the slave within me, and I always will, but I'm not that person anymore." She leaned over and briefly touched his hand, a fleeting bridge across the hungry void. "And neither are you."

Methos found himself blinking back sudden hot tears. He dried his hair again then stared into the fire, his arms wrapped around his knees. He'd been emotional lately. Unbalanced. Like her.

They both needed to move on.

Cassandra was standing now, shaking off the sand from her long hair, and Methos got to his feet, determined to try once more. She turned to him, composed yet watchful, so he took only one step in her direction before going to his knees.

"I am sorry," he told her, looking up at her face, which showed nothing: not suspicion or satisfaction or surprise. Cassandra seldom showed what she truly felt. Neither did he, but now he tried to drop all his masks. His arms were spread and his hands were open, the classic penitential pose. Though this was no posturing; and he meant every word. "I am so sorry, Cassandra, for what I did to you."

"Your sincere apology?" she questioned, even as she took a step toward him. "Again?"

"Again," he agreed, but for once, neither one of them smiled. He'd said the words to her before, at various times and places over the last six centuries, but he'd never gone to his knees. He'd never really understood. Now he did. Rape, murder, pain, humiliation, rage… Methos could still taste and feel and remember them all. "I understand what I did to you. And I am sorry." He drew a breath and tried to steady his words. "I offer you my apology."

He waited, kneeling at her feet and not daring to say more, wondering what emotions she was hiding behind her impassive features, wondering if she would accept it this time, or turn and walk away. Her gaze was sharp and penetrating, even in the dim firelight, and he couldn't face her, not after what he'd done. He bowed his head and stared at the sand.

After a long moment, she knelt too, facing him. "Link with me," she asked.

Methos copied her pose by sitting back on his heels and laying his hands upon his thighs. "That's a change."

"For the better, I hope. I've been afraid to get too close to you."

"You don't trust me."

"In some things."

Methos took no offense. He felt the same way about her. They both knew that the truth was seldom as convenient or helpful as a lie.

"Nor do I trust myself," Cassandra said next. "Especially about you. I want to move past that. Also, I want to— I need to—know what you're feeling now."

"To see if my 'sincere apology' truly is sincere."

"Yes."

"All right," Methos agreed. It was a reasonable request, and he wanted to know what she was feeling, too. "Let's link." That said, he realized he wasn't sure how to begin. Amanda usually placed her hands within his, but he couldn't ask Cassandra to do that. He used to break her hands.

Then Cassandra held up both her hands, palms facing him, and again he mirrored her pose, so that their fingers and thumbs all aligned. They weren't touching, not yet, but he could feel the heat from her skin. Their breathing began to deepen and slow. Palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss, as an English playwright had noted a millennium ago.

When their hands touched, Methos took a deep breath and let their quickenings align. Her gaze stayed steady upon him, and the single tenuous strand of connection between them began to thicken and widen into a link.

These last few months, he'd linked with Amanda nearly every day and with Karla a few times. With them, he could sense their emotions but at a distance, as if they were each holding an end of the same taut rope, woven of silver wire. With Cassandra, the rope began to shorten, pulling them closer together. Then it began sending silver tendrils up his arms.

"No," he said immediately trying to let go and break free, but Cassandra held on.

"It's all right," she said, looking into his eyes while her voice echoed within him and her fingers intertwined with his. "The link is strong, but it's contained. See?"

When Methos looked down, his arms seemed to be encased in a loose mesh of silver fire, but all on the outside, like a pair of opera gloves. Cassandra wore the same. The tendrils had disappeared.

Methos took a steadying breath and tried to relax. "That was quick," he observed.

"We're already joined."

She'd left a piece of her soul with him, ages ago. "Take it," he urged once more. "It's yours."

Her smile floated inside him, warm and sad. "Not anymore."

He could feel her resignation about the past, rising and falling, like ceaseless waves battering the fortress she had built from stones hacked out by rage or carefully shaped by resolve. He could feel her, but he couldn't feel himself. "The edges are gone," he complained, clamping down on his panic again. "I can't tell—"

"You're still you, and I'm still me," she said firmly. "Connect with your body. Ground yourself there."

Methos focused on the sand beneath his knees: cold and damp, with a larger pebble on the left side. The soles of his feet itched from the warmth of the fire. The gloves shimmered in the darkness, and he and Cassandra were still holding hands, their fingers intertwined.

"Good," she said, reassuring and calm. "Stay grounded there."

He did, and when he was ready, they both came up off their heels, bringing their faces almost close enough to kiss. Methos looked into her eyes and let Cassandra look into his soul.

She was gentle, or she tried to be; through their link he could feel her reluctance to cause him pain. Still, sometimes it was excruciating, like a tooth being drilled down to the bare nerve.

"This shouldn't hurt," she told him in concern.

"My conscience is highly sensitive," Methos told her. "Especially about you." He caught her reaction: amused and exasperated skepticism blossoming into doubt and then a wondering realization that it was true. "I'm sorry," he said, bringing it up again so that she could see.

At the back of his raw throat, he tasted the bile of remorse and self-disgust, sickening and bitter and hot, rising up within him and filling his mouth from the inside, as relentless as those strangling vines. Shame flooded his face, scalding away his excuses, while impotent regrets, like a thousand heavy cold stones draped around his neck, made him bow his head.

But from his heart spread the warmth of his affection and concern for her, his enjoyment of her wit and respect for her occasional wisdom, his grudgingly fond acceptance of her annoying habits (some of them, anyway), and a hope that they might be true friends.

He was gratified to find that his feelings for her mirrored hers for him, even to the awareness of a physical attraction and a tiny shred of wondering "what if?" However, her feelings also included the memory of fear and rage, abiding distrust and caution, and deep scars of hurt from abandonment and a love betrayed.

Ancient history. Four thousand years ago. He'd changed, and so had she. Where could they go from here?

"Impatient, aren't you," she murmured, but she was feeling amused and understanding, for she was impatient too. He sensed her eagerness to be done with this, to set the burdens down and move on. To be free. To fly.

He bowed his head and kissed the backs of her hands. Then—amazingly—she kissed his hands in return. Hands that had killed her and tortured her and made her life hell. His hands. Methos found himself trembling, and not from the cold. "Cassandra..."

"Methos," she answered. Tears crumpled the edges of her smile. Her hands tightened on his, bound together within the silver fire. "Yes," she told him, though he already knew. "I accept your apology."

It didn't seem right to thank her. Methos settled for, "I'm glad." Wonder and joy and relief flowed back and forth between them, like the surge and retreat of waves, and they could smile with each other again.

Then she stood, but he stayed on his knees as they let go of each others' hands. With a rapid twirling of her fingers she gathered the silver threads of their quickenings, like combed wool ready to be spun. She lifted her arms high, a priestess in prayer, and then she laid her hands upon the crown of his head, a ritual of blessing and of healing. He needed both.

The silver energy spread through him, a cleansing fire that warmed instead of burned, a surge of awareness and power and well-being. He felt as if he'd taken a quickening, but from life instead of death. He wasn't outlined in light; he was illuminated from within. He could sense every fibre of his body, every nerve and sinew, every bone.

And something that wasn't his: a crimson teardrop deep within his chest. He had to open his heart to reach it, and then he couldn't touch it. It hovered just above his hand, flickering in the light of the fire. In the space of three heartbeats he saw a drop of blood, a polished jewel, and a pomegranate seed.

But he knew what it was. "For you," he said to Cassandra, kneeling before her and holding up his hands, offering her the gift of her soul. She needed healing too.

Cassandra cupped her hands about the crimson drop, and it fluttered like a ruby hummingbird as she lifted it away. Then she pressed her hands against her heart, and it disappeared as she took it home.

"Come," she said, reaching down and pulling him to his feet with a merry laugh, and then they were twirling, leaning back against the pull of each others' hands and going faster round and round. When at last they stumbled and fell, landing half against each other, she kissed his cheek and he put his arm about her shoulders, and they sat together on the beach in silence and watched the bonfire burn.

Amanda and Karla arrived, too soon. Methos and Cassandra stood to greet them, moving apart. "We saw the fire," Amanda called from afar. "We brought the wine!"

Within the circle of firelight, Karla's gaze went back and forth between Methos and Cassandra a few times. "Are you two all right?"

"Yes," Cassandra said, then answered for them both. "We're fine."

They were indeed, Methos was immensely glad to say.

"Good," Amanda declared. "Because we still have work to do, and Karla and I have an idea."


	9. 2e Haunts: the towers fall around us

_**the towers fall around us**_

* * *

**FireDay, ****557-Winter-6.6**  
**Cave of the Winds, Isle of Lesvos**

* * *

"So, Karla," Methos asked late the next morning as he ducked his head and entered the cave, "can we hear about this idea now?"

"When we're all inside," Karla said as she took a seat next to Cassandra on the narrow rock ledge carved into the wall.

"I'm sure you have reason for this sudden appreciation of privacy." Methos stated it as a fact (because it obviously was), but he was expecting an answer.

Karla obliged. "The Council of Nine met yesterday."

"The Sisterhood always meets on the solstice," Cassandra said.

"Do they always talk about you?" Karla asked.

"Fairly often." Cassandra seemed unperturbed. "But no, not always."

Amanda made her appearance at the entry, a silhouette of lithe femininity in a halo of light, and paused there before coming into the cave. She folded herself gracefully onto the sandy floor and began to unpack her bag.

"The Council talked about the rest of us, too." Karla nodded at the glowing ball that Amanda had just placed on the floor. "And they talked about the orb."

Methos wasn't surprised. "We already know they're interested in what we're doing."

"They were interested," Karla agreed. "But now that we're accessing memories, they're _very _interested. Also, the Sisterhood has asked the Watchers to put Cassandra under surveillance."

That perturbed Cassandra. Methos noted how very still she sat, how very calm she seemed.

Amanda, however, lifted her hands in confused exasperation. "We're all under surveillance."

"Most of us are simply being watched," Karla corrected. "Surveillance is usually reserved for unpredictable or highly dangerous immortals."

Such as himself. Cassandra could be highly dangerous, of course, but she'd been so predictable as to be boring these last five centuries or so. Though right now, she was being surprisingly silent. "What's changed?" he asked on her behalf.

Karla turned to Cassandra. "The Sisterhood changed your status from 'on leave' to 'resigned.' They've cleaned out your room in the tower."

Cassandra absorbed that news with a careful nod. "It would seem they know something I don't. A prophecy?"

"My source didn't say," Karla answered.

Methos hadn't heard from his source yet, whose reports were often slower to arrive than Karla's but usually more detailed. Cassandra's sources were legion and usually she knew what the Sisterhood was up to, but she'd been distracted these last few days.

"The Council doesn't take action on a prophecy without vetting it first," Cassandra said. "It must have been at least a psi-eight, or maybe two precogs."

"Or," Methos pointed out, "there was no prophecy, and someone just wants you gone."

"Gone from the Sisterhood or gone for good?" Amanda asked.

Cassandra looked thoughtful. "The Sisterhood take oaths of loyalty."

Methos had taken oaths of loyalty. Everyone he had sworn them with was dead.

"Even if they have 'resigned' me from the Sisterhood, I'm no threat to them," Cassandra said. "The Council won't authorize a kill."

"But they know how to," Amanda reminded everyone. "I really hate," she declared, "that all these mortals know how to kill us."

"The Watchers are a danger," Methos agreed. "They always have been. But they're useful."

"Even necessary," Karla said. "And they keep our secret as a holy trust."

"So does the Sisterhood," Cassandra said. "Those very few who know. And the Watchers watch them, too."

"And we watch them both in return," Methos noted.

"But we don't have psychics, except for Cassandra and a few others, and the Sisterhood does." Amanda turned to Cassandra. "Why did you start that program anyway?"

"To restore what had been taken and destroyed," Cassandra replied. "Every village used to have a few people with 'the sight'. Roland set out to destroy them all."

Which meant Methos wasn't the only one feeling guilt. Cassandra was trying to atone for her past sins.

"I couldn't stop him then," Cassandra continued. "I'm restoring humans' birthright now."

"Lovely for them, not so lovely for us." Amanda waved her hand at the rocky ceiling, not far overhead. "We're hiding in a cave."

"We're containing psychic energy," Cassandra corrected. "Just as we did at the school. It's simply a longer walk."

"But we can't live here or in a tower, and those psychs can see us everywhere. It's creepy, and they're a nuisance."

"They're a necessity, and Immortals will need them." Cassandra spoke with utter certainty, and Karla nodded in agreement.

"Why? To fight the Shadows and the Vorlons?" Methos asked. When Karla looked puzzled, he explained: "Old science-fiction video series. Aliens created human telepaths to help them fight a war."

"Not a war," Cassandra said. "Not to kill. I haven't seen how exactly, but we will need them."

Although Methos was interested in psychic projections of an unknown future, this morning he needed to know more about the here and now. "Speaking of seeing, Karla, what does the Council know of our project?"

"They know we're trying to stop the Game; they don't know how it began. They know we're looking for a key, though since we don't know what it is, neither do they. They know we're using the orb to access memories. However, they think we're looking only in the memories of dead immortals through their quickenings; they don't realize we're trying to access yours. And they know our efforts haven't been going well."

"Will they try to take the orb?" Amanda's hand hovered protectively near the ancient talisman.

"If we succeed." Karla, having given her official report, took out her knife and a cleaning rag.

The solution was obvious to Methos. "Then we should make them think we've failed."

"Yesterday will help with that," Amanda observed dryly.

"So," prompted Methos, "what's your idea for succeeding?"

Amanda folded her hands upon her lap, like a prim schoolgirl. "Use the orb."

"We've been using the orb." Too much lately. Methos never wanted to touch it again.

"But perhaps not in the right way." Amanda touched the orb with her fingertips. "We've all had memories triggered by objects, and the orb is at least five thousand years old."

"Yes, but I don't have any memories of it."

Karla shaved off some of the hair on her forearm then frowned at her blade. "Perhaps you do, and you just don't know it."

"If I don't remember them," Methos pointed out, "they're not memories."

"Unless," Amanda said with a smile and a hint of a purr, "the orb remembers you."

Inside the orb, green and gold tendrils wound about each other in an ever-changing design, like a fractal kaleidoscope. Methos looked away, slightly queasy. Cassandra was staring at the empty niche in the wall, apparently lost in thought. Time for her to wake up; this project had been her idea. "What do you think, Cassandra?"

Her gaze skittered from him to the orb and then back to the empty niche. "That approach never occurred to me," she admitted. "But the orb does have power. Maybe it is the key to finding the key."

Methos didn't bother to hide his sigh of exasperation. "We've been at this for six weeks—some of it distinctly unpleasant—and you're just thinking of this now."

"You never thought of it at all," Amanda replied with infinite sweetness.

Methos sighed once more, a slow hiss through bared teeth, then moved on. "All right. How?"

"I don't know precisely," Amanda said. "We'll have to find out."

He wasn't looking forward to more poking about, especially without a good night's sleep. "First, we need to take care of something." He wasn't looking forward to that, either. "Right, Cassandra?"

"Right." Her response sounded more grimly resolved than encouraging. She moved from the bench to sit on the floor and face Amanda. "Methos and I will be using the orb to look at his memory. If you two could monitor us, please?"

So the four of them sat on the sandy floor with the orb in the center, and Methos once again—and he hoped, for the last time—let Cassandra into his head.

His memory-scape lay dreary under a murky sky, with faded grass and dead flowers in the meadow and distant black trees shrouded in mist. He couldn't even see the mountains. Only the memory-vine showed color, leaves of dark green and flowers of crimson, black and gold.

Cassandra walked straight to it. "Don't touch it!" he warned.

"It's already inside me." She knelt, reaching out both hands, but palms up and waiting instead of plucking.

She didn't need to reach for it; the vine found her. The flowers all turned their faces to her face, and the thin green tendrils probed her skin. He watched helplessly as the vines coiled around her arms and sprouted new leaves. She stood, and more shoots emerged from the ground then scrambled up her body until she disappeared within a woven shroud of green.

Her arms—branches now—lifted skyward, and the leaves quivered, as if touched by a passing breeze, though he felt no wind. Probably she was trying to move or breathe. Or scream. He could hear nothing. He couldn't move either. As sometimes happened in dreams, he felt as if his own feet were rooted to the ground.

On the green mound that covered Cassandra, flowers began to bloom rapidly—gold at breasts and palms and the tip of each finger, scarlet at mouth and vulva and navel, black with red centers at ears and nose and eyes. The leaves and vines withered and dropped away to reveal white bone, as if her body had been stripped of flesh and bleached white by a desert sun. The flowers stayed.

The skull turned slowly to look at him, black flowers staring above a palisade of moist red petals where the mouth should be. A golden tongue extruded from that orifice and flickered as it tasted the air.

Then the black petals shriveled into nothing and fell away, leaving behind small red berries that burned like coals in the empty sockets of the eyes and ears. The tongue flicked up and caught them one by one, then fed the red and waiting maw. The petals of the mouth closed then folded in upon themselves, as the flower devoured itself until nothing was left but bone.

Then suddenly there stood Cassandra, with arms at her sides and her body and hair restored. At her feet trembled a small red flower atop a stalk arising from a rosette of deep green leaves.

And he could move again. "Are you all right?" he asked, hurrying toward her.

She seemed puzzled by his concern. "Yes, I'm fine. Why? What did you see?"

Nothing real, he reminded himself. Just images in his brain. "You were a Green Woman, covered with vines." He tried to sound amused. "Then a skeleton blooming with flowers, like the skulls from the Aztec Day of the Dead."

"Interesting," she said mildly.

"What did you see?"

"I asked the vine to come home. The flowers fruited, and as I ate the berries the vine disappeared. Now my memory is back with me."

"That was—" Methos knew better than to call it easy "—simple."

"Surprisingly so." She looked down at the red flower. "That memory is yours."

Methos watched as the petals fluttered in a non-existent breeze, variously taking on the shapes of a drop of blood, a jewel, a pomegranate seed. "So it worked."

"Removing my memory did. Stopping the nightmares…" She shrugged. "You'll find out."

"I suppose," he agreed, but he already liked his chances. In time, that red flower would fade and die. The mist was lifting, and he could see the mountains now. Near the base of the hill, a gnarled olive tree was laden with white blooms. "I've never seen your tree in flower before," he told Cassandra. "It probably started blooming last night."

"Probably," she agreed.

He had hoped to share a smile with her over that, but she kept looking at the tree. "Do you think my image changed in your memory-scape?" he asked, both because he was genuinely curious and to remind her that it was her turn to share.

"Let's go see," she said promptly and offered him her hand.

Methos hadn't expected such decisiveness. He bowed before he touched his fingers to hers. In a blink, they stepped into her memory-scape. The garden had an unkempt look, with weeds in the beds and fruit rotting on the vine. Cassandra dropped his hand.

"Do you see people as trees in your memory, too?" he asked Cassandra. The woods seemed closer and darker than before.

"No, trees already have personalities."

"Then am I the volcano?" He hoped not. Black smoke was billowing above the cone and red fingers of lava were oozing down the sides.

Her lips twisted in a pained marriage of grimace and smile. "No." She started walking toward the opening in the garden wall, and he went along. "In my memory, I connect people with their homes."

As soon as they stepped outside the garden walls, he saw a town. It stretched to the horizon, though in the distance were piles of rubble and isolated chimneys. To his right, a rectangle of daffodils outlined vanished walls. The volcano was in front of them again, but it seemed farther now.

The styles of building spanned the centuries and the continents, though some of the architecture was bizarre. A farmhouse supported a skyscraper, and a round tower from Celtic Ireland stood at the front of a space-dome. "Do I have a tent in my backyard?" he asked.

"You don't have a backyard," she told him. "Or a house." She pointed to the left, where a line of pine trees on a hillside stuck up like shark's teeth against the sky. "You're over the hill."

"In so many ways," he murmured. She ignored that, and he went with her past a four-story brownstone and a Mongolian ger, down a street lined with more houses, and then into the woods and up a hill. The way was steep, and there was no path. His abode (whatever it was) was both over the hill and far away. It seemed he'd been banished to the hinterlands, far from civilization.

She stopped when they reached the top of the ridge, underneath those jagged pines. Before them lay a round bowl of a valley, and near its center stood a single granite menhir, twice as tall as a man.

"The lake is gone," she said. "There used to be water surrounding your stone."

Now there was grass, tall blades of silver and green, dancing in a non-existent breeze. "It's easier to reach," he pointed out, but even so, a monolith had no door and no way in. No space for people. No comfort. No home. Cassandra, it seemed, did not see him as welcoming.

Perhaps, someday, flowers might bloom. Perhaps they might cover the three stones that lay toppled and broken on the ground. Methos didn't need to ask who they were.

He did have other questions, but she announced, "It's time to leave," and with a gut-wrenching twist, they were back to the real world.

"That was quick," Karla said, handing Cassandra a cup of water.

Amanda gave Methos hot tea. "And easy, too, I hope."

Cassandra was already staring at the niche again, the cup cradled in her hands, and she didn't seem to have heard. "It was surprisingly simple," Methos answered. He drank thirstily.

"Good." Amanda reached both her arms over her head and stretched. "Maybe asking the orb to remember you will be simple, too."

"Could be." Methos was surprised to find he was actually looking forward to it. Tomorrow, probably, after a decent meal and a good night's sleep. And, he hoped, sex. For the first time in days, he'd found Amanda's stretch to be intriguingly delightful. Cassandra's inward stare, however, was never good. She was not fine, which meant they were not fine, regardless of what she had said last night.

Damn. He had hoped that giving her back that piece of herself would give her the power to tame her nightmares, and then the two of them could finally move on. Perhaps with time, they would. But she didn't seem well rested this morning, and she couldn't have enjoyed taking back that memory. "Cassandra," he began, intending to offer his help, but she was already standing and she didn't respond to her name.

Instead, she went to the niche, poured some water on the ground then drank the rest. She put the cup upside down inside the niche, bowed to it with arms crossed over her breasts, then walked out of the cave. As soon as she had climbed down that steep approach, she started to run.

Karla glanced at the cup and the empty doorway. Her sigh was a carefully measured exhale. "That's not going to be easy or simple."

"No," Methos agreed. Any help he could offer would have to wait. Cassandra wouldn't want him to track her down. "Are you going after her?"

"Later," Karla said. "She wants to be alone."

Amanda looked up from the orb, where a golden flower was blossoming between her hands. "Shall we get started, Methos?"

"Now? But—"

"We don't need Cassandra for this."

It seemed his fate to be surrounded by decisive women. "You sound very sure."

"I am." Her face and hands glowed golden with the light of the orb. At the center of her dark eyes gleamed gold flame, her quickening manifesting as light.

Methos hadn't seen Amanda in full priestess mode before. She was just as unnerving as Cassandra.

"I'll keep watch over you both," Karla offered.

"Come," Amanda urged, while within the orb motes danced in an intricate ballet, like fireflies on a summer's evening. "Find the key then see what has been hidden all these years."

Hidden knowledge, ancient secrets, the siren call of the unknown. He'd always liked to learn, and though curiosity may have killed the cat, cats had only nine lives. Methos had a million, maybe more.

He sat down facing Amanda, and Karla helped all their quickenings align. He could already feel the pulsing of the orb, surging with every heartbeat in golden waves. The firefly motes coalesced into a vortex, spiraling in to create a pathway into the heart of the golden flame.

Methos reached out and put his hands upon the orb.

* * *

Cassandra ran toward the villa then turned from it to run on the beach. Her legs ached and her lungs burned and she ran as fast as she could, but she knew she would be too slow. The nightmares would find her. They were waiting, breeding in the dark places of her mind. She couldn't see them, but she knew they were there.

Methos she had seen—in alternating flickers of then and now. Face clean and short hair, blue paint and long hair. Eyes soft with cloying sympathy and intrusive concern, eyes coolly watching her die. Cassandra had nearly snatched up Karla's knife to slit his throat. Instead, she had made an offering before the altar, and then she ran.

It wasn't enough. She had freed Methos from her memory—and that had been terrifyingly easy—but there was no escape for her. Even after last night on the beach, when she and Methos had finally connected and she had accepted his apology, still he haunted her. Even after he had given her back that piece of her soul, still she was not whole.

He had moved on, but she would never be truly free.

She veered to the right, toward the water, and then she pounded her way through the surf, her footsteps heavy on the sodden sand, the spray cold and stinging on her thighs. Her legs were soaked by the time she came upon the dead octopus, shriveled and bleached and half-eaten by gulls.

Cassandra stopped, only a pace from that death. This wasn't the way. She trudged through sand to an outcropping of rocks to find shelter from the wind. She pulled her thighs to her chest, still heaving for air, and wrapped her arms around her legs then put her forehead to her knees.

She wanted Connor. She missed him. He would have gone running with her. Connor had always known just how far and how fast she needed to go, either pushing her or pacing her, goading or consoling her, but staying with her every step of the way.

Connor would have known how to make her laugh, and he would have held her in his arms when she cried. He would have listened, letting her know when she was being an idiot and when he thought her wise. He would have kissed her good night and been there in the darkness when the nightmares came. Connor would have loved her, every step of the way.

But he was dead, eighteen months now. Already, his home in her memory had started to fade. The farmhouse door needed painting, and the flowers in the roof garden of the skyscraper had died. Connor was gone.

She needed him.

When she woke, the sun was a blood-red hole low in the sky. She felt stiff and cramped, lying on the cold sand, but she dared not move. He was tracking her, and he was near. He would be angry and he would punish her, even worse than the last time. He had used fire that day. She could still remember what her flesh smelled like when she burned. Cassandra whimpered in fear then hastily jammed a knuckle in her mouth and bit down to stifle the sound.

That pain—tiny and real—jarred her fully awake. The nightmare shredded, clinging like spider-strands across her mouth and eyes while its talons clicked across her bones. It scuttled to a recess in her mind, where it crouched and watched her from the darkness with coolly measuring eyes.

She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest again. She hated chase dreams; they lingered for hours. She went through the breathing exercises to slow her heart rate and cleanse the hormones of fear from her body then meditated for a time. Finally, she stood and scrubbed at her cheeks to wipe away the marks of dried tears then started the long walk back to the villa.

Her nightmares came with her, every step of the way.

Karla was waiting for her on the beach. Even in the fading light, her silent assessment of Cassandra's appearance was swift and thorough, and it ended with an inquisitive brow.

Cassandra answered with an impatient lift of her chin.

Karla didn't hesitate. "We need you at the cave."

"I need food." She hadn't eaten since dawn.

Karla handed her a roll, heavy with baked-in cheese. "You can eat while we walk."

Cassandra wanted a real meal and a bath, and she wanted to be alone, not traipsing across the countyside at sunset to sit with three other immortals in a cold cave. "Can't it wait?"

"No."

Cassandra knew she'd get no more information now. She sighed then took a bite of the roll, and they started the walk back to the cave. Karla's urgency showed in her clipped stride, but Cassandra didn't hurry.

The sun had set and she'd finished eating by the time they climbed the steep hill to the cave entrance. Amanda was knitting by the soft light of a small lantern, her needles clicking, and Methos looked out from a patch of darkness in the corner. "Welcome back," he said, emerging from the shadows.

He was rubbing at his hair and yawning, as if waking up from a nap, but Cassandra knew he hadn't spent all afternoon sleeping. He and Amanda had clearly taken advantage of Karla's absence; the scent of their rutting hung in the air. Lucky man, to be able to enjoy both sex and sleep.

He was happy, too, even grinning, delighted as a child with a muddy worm. "Amanda was right," Methos said. "With the orb, we found the key."

Accomplishing in a single afternoon what they'd been trying to do for six weeks. Amanda, now busy with tea cups at the heater, looked as if she had just acquired a fortune in gems, and even Karla seemed supremely satisfied "Congratulations," Cassandra told them all then looked at the orb, now sitting in the niche in the wall. The green and gold tracery had given way to white and blue, like capillaries under delicate skin. "Have you opened your memory yet, Methos?"

"Not 'opened' exactly," Methos said.

"The 'key' is a technique for accessing the orb," Karla explained. "The orb is a storage crystal, as well as a receiver and transmitter and amplifier. His early memories had been transferred into it."

"How?" Cassandra demanded. "When?" She got to the most important question last. "Why?"

Methos answered in the same quick style: "During a quickening. At least five thousand years ago. And I don't know." He grinned again. "Yet."

"What are the memories of?" Cassandra asked.

"Watch and see," Karla said, offering the orb. "That's quicker than talking."

Cassandra didn't touch it. As curious as she was, she didn't want Methos's memories in her head.

"Amanda said it was like being in a movie," Methos immediately reassured her.

Cassandra was both appreciative of his concern and annoyed at his understanding. She was annoyed at them all. She was tired and hungry, and she didn't like being pushed.

"Let's all sit down," Amanda suggested, coming over with a cup in each hand. "It's been a long day." She handed one cup to Cassandra and another to Karla, then went back for two more.

The four of them drank, and Cassandra welcomed the silence. She would have liked calmness, too, but Amanda and Methos were emitting excitement and impatience, and Karla's urgency trembled in the air.

Cassandra didn't hurry but took the time she needed. But as soon as her tea was gone, she picked up the orb. She was curious, too. The impatience in the room shifted to eagerness, as Methos nodded to her and Karla smiled. Through a link, Amanda showed Cassandra how to use the key.

It was simple and easy, wonderfully so, as if the orb had been made for her, as if she had been born to it. Methos opened a door, and Cassandra walked into an ancient world.

There she saw—she felt—the far-ranging plans of a forgotten people and the hopes of a boy with Methos's eyes. Until one day, when the dreams were shattered, the promises broken, and life after life was squandered and destroyed.

When she returned to the cave, her face was wet with tears and her heart heavy with sorrow for what might have been. In the faces of the others, Cassandra saw ancient lines, save that Methos had the boy's eyes. "I never imagined," she said as she slowly placed the orb upon the sand.

"Who could?" Amanda asked.

"It is unbelievable," Karla added.

"But you believe it?"

"I do," she said, and Methos and Amanda nodded, too.

Cassandra also believed. "You realize what this means?"

"Not completely, not yet," Karla said, putting the orb into Amanda's bag. "But all of us should realize one thing."

"And that is?" Amanda asked.

Methos knew. "It's time to plan."

* * *

**Special Watcher Report**

_Subject(s): Methos (I-0001), Cassandra (I-1560), Karla (I-3215), Amanda (I-3830)  
Date: __557-Winter-7.9  
Keywords: Keeper Talismans, Memory Recovery_

_To: Hagar, High Tribune of the Watchers  
From: Giorgis (W-2654A)  
Content: Memory Recovery Project (summary compiled from field reports)_

The four Immortals discontinued their memory recovery project 62 days after it began. Their search for "the key" was not successful, nor did they identify it. As far as we know, neither Amanda nor Karla attempted memory recovery. Methos and Cassandra did access memories of a few dead immortals, but both experienced psychic backlash, perhaps because of the immortals' death trauma via the quickening.

Cassandra's symptoms were worsening (nightmares, depression, suicide attempts, temper outbursts) and on 557-Winter-6.7 she left the Island of Lesvos without informing the others. Four days later, she sent a message saying she had taken refuge on holy ground but not saying where. Sister Simone (W-2856S) reports that Cassandra is living in seclusion at the Temple in Limoges.

Methos seems to have suffered no lasting ill effects. He and Amanda arrived at the Argentinian estate of Elena (WR-5081-6G3) on 557-Winter-7.7, apparently for a social visit.

Amanda has the Orb Talisman in her possession. She did not wish the abandon the project; dishes were thrown. Her Watcher speculates that "the key" would have lead to ancient treasure.

Karla departed Earth on the spaceship _Urania _(WR-1406-2K9) on 557-Winter-7.5. She took the Blade Talisman with her. First stop is Caledonia. (Itinerary attached)

_**Recommendations:  
**_-Assist Amanda in keeping the orb from the Sisterhood  
-Verify the location of the other seven talismans  
-Place Amanda under surveillance.  
-Maintain surveillance of Methos, Cassandra and Karla

**Distribution list:** (by order of the High Tribune of the Watchers) Restricted. Watcher Tribunes only. Not for release to the Sisterhood.


	10. 3a Hopes: dreams that have escaped

**Part III - Hopes**

**the dreams that have escaped you**

* * *

**Earthday, Autumn 6, 557 at Sunearth School, Terra**

* * *

"When will Sister Cassandra be coming back to this school, Headmistress Uldane?" Viyar asked on a cool morning in the garden.

"She's not expected to," came the reply as the headmistress plucked a tiny weed from between the cabbages. She turned to look up at Viyar. "And that disappoints you."

Viyar hastily checked her shields. They were strong and in order, woven with all the emotions, just as Sister Xioq had taught them.

The headmistress pulled another weed. "And it surprises you that I know that."

"I'm shielded," Viyar protested.

"Your emotions are shielded, and very well, too. I've never seen such a vibrant plaid display before." Headmistress Uldane sat back on her heels. "Your face, however, is open."

Viyar felt a sudden flush and then a flood of heat in her cheeks. Anyone—even prosaics—could read her now: embarrassment followed by shame at her lack of control. She bowed her head, both to apologize and to hide. "I will practice more, Headmistress."

"Good." She waved a hand at the garden bed that stretched along the path, and Viyar joined in helping the crop plants to grow. "Why do you ask about Sister Cassandra?" the headmistress asked as they removed the weeds.

"I had some questions about that dream-vision a year ago."

"Are you remembering it?" Headmistress asked immediately with a vermillion flash of concern.

"No. That is, I remember just enough to know I don't want to remember more." Viyar didn't mention her more recent dreams. "I'm wondering how it happened, and how she erased it. Would you tell me where Sister Cassandra is, so that I might write to her?"

Headmistress Uldane stood then brushed off her hands. "You may give me a message, and I'll see that it's sent."

That evening, Viyar wrote to the woman whose face glimmered in smoke and fire in dreams. The next morning, Headmistress Uldane sent the message; Viyar didn't know where.

When a month passed and no response came, Viyar set out to find the answers herself. But she found nothing, and the dreams became less frequent and she was busy with school and her first love, so she put thoughts of Sister Cassandra away.

But in the spring, when the senior novices went to tour ancient sites in the Mediterranean, a woman came up beside Viyar at the Temple of Artemis and asked quietly, "How can I help, Viyar?"

It took Viyar a moment to recognize the woman, who wore the loose trousers and long tunic one might find in any town, boldly striped instead of the drab colors Sister Cassandra had always worn. The lusciously long hair, which Viyar had always coveted, was gone, clipped to just above the nape of the neck and darkened to brown. But the voice was Sister Cassandra's, and the wide green eyes were the same.

"Are you troubled?" Sister Cassandra asked. "Has that dream returned?"

Teachers always fussed like mother ducks. "No. But I've had other dreams, and you're in them."

"Prophecies of the future?" She sounded hopeful.

"I think they're echoes of the past." Viyar watched with interest as Sister Cassandra's barriers, smooth as an egg shell but with iridescent glimmers, leaked smears of dismay but not surprise.

"Ah," was all Sister Cassandra said. She sat down upon a bench and patted it in invitation, so Viyar joined her there. "Tell me?" Sister Cassandra asked.

"It's dark. Something's chasing me, and I'm trying to escape. I don't know from what. No one ever speaks." Viyar didn't mention the other sounds in the dark: the sobbing gasps, the ragged whimpers ... the screams. "I do see horses and people in the distance. The clothes seem old-style, long ago. Sometimes, I see your face through flames. Why are you in my dreams?"

Sister Cassandra laid her hands flat atop her thighs and looked out over the ruins of the temple on the hill. "I think the question is: why are you in mine?"

"You see my face through flames, too?"

"No. But I've had chase dreams like that for a very long time. As you said, they're echoes of the past."

Viyar knew how that happened. "From an ancestress."

Cassandra turned to her. "Do you dream from your ancestresses?"

"Of course, they're in me, down through the ages. I thought at first that you and I shared a bloodline—that your dream-ancestress was my ancestress, too—but you're not in the family tree. Though you do have the sight."

"I'm a sport," Sister Cassandra explained.

Wild talents, Viyar's biogenesis teacher had called them. Often unrepeatable and unpredictable, and so seldom included in the breeding program. She understood now why Sister Cassandra was childless. Viyar could sense Sister Cassandra's reluctance, but she asked anyway, "In the dreams, do you know what's chasing us?"

"Death." Sister Cassandra intertwined her fingers, making a tight cage of her hands. "Or perhaps just our own fears."

Viyar wondered if those fears were truly her own or Sister Cassandra's. "When I had that dream-vision a year and a half ago, did that connect us then?" Viyar asked. "Or would the connection have happened anyway?"

"I don't know." She looked sidelong at Viyar. "But the connection goes both ways, for though I haven't seen you in the flames or a chase dream, I have recently dreamt of you."

Viyar saw no reason to shield her fascination. "Doing what?"

"Holding a newborn child."

"A baby?" she asked in delight. Viyar wasn't ready to be a parent, not for a few more years, but she was certainly looking forward to the day. Her gene chart contained the names of six males approved to father her children. Her mother had introduced two of them to her, another three were dead and preserved in the spermbank, and the last was a boy of five. "Is the baby mine?" she asked. "Is it a girl?"

"I don't know. But it feels like a prophecy."

That was truth; Viyar—though she knew not to trespass in a mind—could sense the honesty within the older woman. "Can we link, so that I may see the dream?" Viyar asked. Sister Cassandra hesitated, so Viyar pointed out, "We're already connected, and we won't need to go deep."

"Viyar," Sister Cassandra began, "I hold secrets that are not mine to share. With your talents, I fear—"

"You could lead," Viyar suggested, eager to see the baby, and she offered Sister Cassandra her hand.

After a moment Sister Cassandra nodded. She laid two fingertips across Viyar's wrist, a cool and delicate touch. Viyar closed her eyes, the better to see in the mind. After a swirl of mist or smoke, she saw/sensed herself, holding a baby who peered up at her with blue-dark eyes. A dream-Sister Cassandra hovered nearby. Other children circled her, singing and holding hands, a play-yard game. She couldn't quite make out the words or see their faces. The song hummed along her nerves. She knew it, though she had never heard it before. The baby smiled, and Viyar smiled in return. The blue-dark eyes held her, deep pools with velvet black depths, an endless entry into time.

Sharp tugs at her fingers made her blink, and when the mists cleared, she saw Sister Cassandra, looking concerned. Viyar quickly grounded herself in the now-world. "Thank you," she said. "That was incredibly precise. You went right to it."

"I've been doing a lot of memory work lately," Sister Cassandra explained; then she looked down the hill. "The others are gathering. You should go."

At the base of the hill, the novices were assembling into their flock, and Viyar could see the urgent beckoning from the tour leader. She got up from the bench. "Thank you, Sister Cassandra, for everything."

"Certainly. And, Viyar...," she called.

Viyar immediately stopped on the path and turned back. "Yes?"

"No one else need know of this prophecy."

"I will never tell anyone," Viyar agreed.

"Someday," Sister Cassandra said, "you will come find me."

At those words, Viyar felt a strange thrill along her spine, an echo in her mind. "Yes, of course," she agreed, and she knew it would be so. It was exciting; she had never been part of a prophecy before. Sister Cassandra was pleased and excited, too; Viyar caught a trace of that through the shields, like a plume of smoke on a windy day. "We are linked."

Sister Cassandra smiled. "We are indeed."

* * *

When the tour group returned to the school, Viyar was summoned to the headmistress's office. She stole glances at the marvelous pictures of the birds on the walls as she traveled the long walk from the door to the desk. Headmistress Uldane sat behind it, and the chair in front of the desk was occupied by a woman Viyar didn't recognize.

The stranger's green jumpsuit didn't fit her very well, and her short, dark hair was uncombed. Her emotions were a blur of weariness and placid acceptance, a flat and uninformative gray. The insignia at her lapel was one Viyar had never seen before: a silver rod interwoven in a black circle that had eleven small silver dots all along its rim.

Viyar bowed to Headmistress Uldane and then to the unknown visitor, but said nothing. The headmistress had only a plain framework of shields established, and her irritation was washing over Viyar in waves. "Sister Giorgis has requested to speak to you, Viyar," Headmistress said.

Viyar could tell that the request had been more of a command, and that Headmistress had to obey. Sister Giorgis didn't look old enough to outrank a headmistress, so probably she was an emissary for someone else. Viyar bowed to Sister Giorgis and waited with a polite expression on her face and an opaque rainbow shield around her mind, just as she practiced.

"You met with Sister Cassandra a nine-day ago," Sister Giorgis began.

Viyar hadn't spoken of the meeting to anyone, but people had eyes. Many had seen her speaking to Sister Cassandra that day. "Yes."

"What did you talk about?"

"Dreams." Viyar carefully spoke only truth. Headmistress was skilled and Sister Giorgis might have talents, too. She was definitely observant; Viyar had seldom felt so watched before.

"Nothing else?"Sister Giorgis asked.

"Me having a baby. Her being a sport."

Sister Giorgis flickered with black-purple surprise. "What kind of sport?"

"It's a term we psychics use," Headmistress explained, with a slow ooze of green condescension. "For someone with talent who's not from the breeding lines."

So, Sister Giorgis was a prosaic, ignorant of the psi-world. Viyar relaxed a little and dared to ask a question of her own. "Is Sister Cassandra all right?"

"You just saw her," Sister Giorgis said. "Sensed her. You tell me."

"She was fine."

"Anything different?"

"She's cut her hair, and she had new clothes. I didn't recognize her at first. But no, she hadn't changed." Viyar didn't like being confused. "Why are you asking these questions?"

Sister Giorgis's sharp look wasn't as piercing as a thought probe, but Viyar stood straighter under it. After a moment, Sister Giorgis nodded abruptly then spoke. "Sister Cassandra has been in seclusion for the past five seasons, ever since she left here. She hasn't spoken to anyone. Until she met with you."

"I asked her to meet."

"Two seasons ago," Sister Giorgis pointed out.

"You read our mail?" Headmistress asked, and anyone could see the flare of anger in her eyes. Viyar didn't like being spied on, either.

"We were reading hers." Sister Giorgis bristled with tiny yellow spikes of impatience. "Sister Cassandra wasn't. Not then."

That explained why Sister Cassandra had taken so long to respond. Viyar had meant to ask.

"We were worried about her," Sister Giorgis finished.

"The memory-work she was doing here went badly," Headmistress said, equally prickly. "She needed time to recover."

"And she has," Viyar said. "She was fine."

"I'm truly glad to hear that," Sister Giorgis, broadcasting sincerity and relief. "Because right after she talked to you, she disappeared."

"You lost Cassandra?" Headmistress asked. She seemed weirdly pleased.

"We'll find her." Those confident words didn't match the emotions. Sister Giorgis's yellow prickles rippled with concern.

Viyar wasn't worried. She knew she would see Sister Cassandra again.

Someday.

* * *

**Turnday, Spring 9, 558 at Mountain Haven, Terra**

* * *

"Another file from the Tribunal?" Methos asked as he came into the room. Amanda was in her usual position for reading those: lying on her stomach on the thick rug in front of the fire, her upper body propped up on her elbows, her knees bent so that her feet were up in the air, ankles neatly crossed. Paper lay in piles all about her on the floor.

"Mmm," she murmured but didn't look up. Methos briskly rubbed his hands together to warm them then began massaging her feet. "Mmmmm," she said, a much longer and lower note. "Ah..." The papers were being ignored.

"Anyone we know?" Methos asked as he applied pressure with his thumb to her instep. Her toes curled in but she didn't complain. "Or know of?"

"I don't," she said. "You might. Goes by Ruten, born in Ecuadoria, about three hundred years old."

It took Methos a moment to place the name from a grove of trees a few years back. Ruten had been decent swordsman but a nasty fellow, taunting his young fool of an opponent with threats to the wife during a duel.

Methos sat down on the floor, the better to see Amanda's face, and she rolled over so that they could talk. Her feet, however, were quite prominently positioned on his thigh. He obligingly went back to the massage, working on the toes now. "What's your verdict on Ruten?"

"The Tribunal should take his head."

Amanda was seldom that definite. "What's he done?" Methos asked.

"According to his chronicle, he's always been an ass, pompous and arrogant, and he's challenged almost as many women as men. But lately he's taken to abducting mortals."

"Do they survive?" He doubted the wife of that immortal had.

"So far. But..." Amanda glanced at the scattered papers, where pictures showed a bloody foot, a burned hand, a black eye. She shuddered, and Methos felt the quiver all the way in her toes. "The Tribunal should bring him in now," she declared then got up and went to make tea.

Methos leaned over and snagged the papers, skimming through them to get a sense of the man. Ruten was a bully with an increasing taste for torture and domination, particularly of women. Like many immortals, he had no family and no friends. He'd amassed a tidy fortune, and his head count was only twelve.

Perfect.

Methos stacked the papers neatly and joined Amanda at the stove. "How's our little project doing?" he asked her.

Amanda flashed him a conspiratorial grin as she poured boiling water into the pot. "Getting bigger all the time."

"That'll make an impression at the reunion."

"It should."

Amanda sounded smug. But then, she had done most of the work. "How many of the women are coming?" he asked.

"Fifteen so far. Three haven't replied, and three said no, Evann among them."

Methos shrugged. "I never expected her to come." She'd always been a solitary creature. "But I'll let her know." He would have told her earlier, but she would have wanted proof.

Just as he had.

They took their cups back to the fireplace to watch wood burn. In all these millennia, Methos had never tired of watching flame.

"Cassandra wants to see the progress we've made," Amanda said. "She's coming here soon."

Methos knew how that worked. "Then I'm leaving sooner."

"Must you?" Amanda asked. "Cassandra said she's better now."

"I'd like her to stay better." His presence couldn't help but it might very well hurt. "Besides, I need to take care of a few things before we ship out."

"Shopping?" Amanda asked with predictable interest.

"Selling, actually." Though what Methos really needed to take care of didn't involve money at all.

* * *

"Methos left?" Cassandra asked when she arrived at Mountain Haven and saw the empty room.

"Four days ago," Amanda replied. "He said he needed to take care of some things before our voyage."

Cassandra had immense experience with truth left unspoken. "And he was avoiding me."

"Yes," Amanda answered easily.

Irritation streaked through Cassandra's appreciation for his thoughtfulness and caution. As she followed Amanda down the hall, Cassandra examined the roots of that emotion. Buried—not very deep—she found frustration with her own weakness and discomfort at his deep understanding. Cassandra set them aside for now, and focused on the relief that she wouldn't have to deal with him today. "Smart man," she commented

"Very," Amanda agreed. "Karla came yesterday, but she's out running now. We can have dinner together tonight."

"Good." Cassandra hadn't seen her friend since they had parted on Isle Haven.

Amanda grandly opened the door to another room. "Here's 'the project'."

Cassandra gazed in admiration. "Beautiful."

"Thank you." Amanda seemed content to gaze in admiration, too.

"You have the video record?" Cassandra asked. She'd been eager to see that ever since Methos and Amanda had declared success.

"Of course. Karla said she'd like to watch it with you."

Cassandra sent her curiosity and impatience to wait with her earlier frustration. "Before dinner then."

"Certainly." After a few moments, Amanda shut the door then they crossed the hallway to the parlor. Cassandra headed for the welcome warmth of the fire. Old castles were drafty places, and spring had come late to the mountains. Snow still covered many of the valleys. Without the extensive network of tunnels and caves for access, she would probably still be urging a donkey up the trail. Cassandra held out her hands to the fire and tried to stifle a yawn.

"Tired?" Amanda asked

"A little. Traveling's always wearying."

But Amanda herself was no novice at the lie, the half-truth, and the evasion. "So are dreams," she observed. "And nightmares."

Cassandra shrugged. "I'm managing."

Amanda took Cassandra's right hand in both of her own. "Wouldn't you rather be healed?"

Cassandra resisted the urge to pull away. "It's not that simple."

"It is with the orb."

She seemed very certain, and not just about the orb. Amanda seemed confident in her power and serene in herself. She carried herself like a priestess. Like Rebecca. "You have learned a lot this past year," Cassandra observed.

Amanda lifted her head, her expression intense, her gaze compelling. "You have no idea." Then she grinned mischievously, her invitation to come play. "Yet."

"Amanda—"

"All you'll need to do is touch the orb with your fingertips and relax. I'll do the work, and Karla will monitor." Her grip tightened. "We can stop the nightmares, Cassandra. And the flashbacks."

Cassandra gently disengaged herself. Amanda meant well, but some memories had deep roots, and when dug out, they sprouted again in different ways. "I'm managing," she repeated then reminded Amanda, "I've done it before."

"But why do it again?" Amanda asked. "And again and again and again? Do you like being a victim? Or do you just like holding this over Methos?"

"No," Cassandra snapped. "I just—" But there was no "just", no clear simple reason. There was fear, reluctance, memories of past failures, lack of true confidence in Amanda, wariness of the orb, an age-old identity of pain, and familiarity with the devils she knew. "Thank you, Amanda. But no.

At dinner, however, Karla convinced Cassandra to try. "It works," Karla said simply. "Amanda's been doing it for months now. Mortals, mostly, and she did it for me."

"And the nightmares are gone?"

"They are. Flashbacks, too. It's ... relaxing, now that I don't have to worry about my own brain ambushing me."

Cassandra hadn't relaxed in a very long time.

"You should have it done," Karla said, and Amanda nodded.

"We can try," Cassandra ventured. "But I don't want to forget." Her experiences, horrible as they were, had made her who she was. "I just want to be the one in control of when and what I remember."

"The memories stay," Amanda reassured her. "It's the things growing out of the memories that need to go."

They finished the meal then formed a circle. It was warm and welcoming and familiar, for the three of them had worked together before, though seldom with Amanda in control.

She had a thief's touch, deft and sure and knowing, and Cassandra didn't flinch as Amanda moved silently through the deep crevices and dark corners of Cassandra's mind, gathering up treacherous spiderwebs of nightmare and following the lines to the nests of the creature that spun them.

Then Amanda brought them up and out of the circle, and Cassandra sat blinking in the golden light of the orb. She felt ... lighter. Empty. Free. "That's all?"

"I may have to go back in; some of that was pretty knotted and I probably missed some." Amanda wrinkled her nose. "All those eyes and teeth and claws..." She shuddered and made a gagging sound. Then she patted Cassandra's arm. "You poor thing. No wonder you're bitchy."

Cassandra decided not to ask Amanda what her own excuse was. That would be bitchy. Instead she asked, "How long did that take?"

"Seven minutes," Karla said.

Cassandra stopped herself from asking "That's all?" again. Millennia of terror swept up in minutes. Centuries of pain collected in a ball. "It can't be that simple."

"It's simple only because the orb is complicated." Amanda picked up the orb and cradled it in her hands. The golden glow danced in her eyes, a priestess of the flame. "It was designed to heal."

* * *

"And it did," Cassandra told Methos a moon-dark later, after he had returned from his errands and while he and Cassandra were walking on the parapet. "I haven't had any dreams or flashbacks or panic attacks since."

"Good." He was relieved for them both as well as happy for her.

"It's amazing what that orb can do, now that you unlocked it," Cassandra continued.

"And now that Amanda's learned how to use it." Methos strongly believed in giving credit where it was due. People liked that. And Amanda definitely deserved it.

"Yes, she's done wonderful work," Cassandra agreed. "She and I will be looking at the other talismans soon."

"Unlocking them, too?" Methos asked.

"Perhaps," she allowed.

Methos knew them better than that. If they could do it, they would. Just to see. "By 'soon,' you mean after the reunion. Yes?"

Cassandra paused a beat too long. "Yes."

"It's a delicate time," he reminded her. He'd have to remind Amanda, too, though he wouldn't need to be quite so circumspect about it. Cassandra didn't take orders well—at least not from him. But she wasn't stupid (usually) and she wasn't foolish (mostly).

"You're right," Cassandra told him. "It's not a good time to investigate the talismans."

Today, she was charmingly reasonable. Methos liked her that way.

A few days later, though, she mentioned the talismans again. "If we unlock them, what do you think they could do when linked?"

He'd been wondering the same thing. "Even more. And if we merge all nine, instead of just three..."

Her expression didn't change and her stride didn't falter, but Methos saw her hand tighten. They both liked power, and here it was, beckoning with its bloody fingers. "This is all to stop the Game, isn't it, Cassandra?"

Again, she waited a beat too long. "Of course," she agreed. Her smile was brilliantly charming. "It is for me."

Methos lied right back at her. "It is for me, too."

But what might they do, with the power of gods?


	11. 3b Hopes: a promise of the future

**A promise of the future**

* * *

**Starday Autumn 10, 558 PE at Cloudrise School on Geseret  
**

* * *

The immortal women gathered for Remembrance Day, invited by Chelle to come see the new school for pre-immortals on Geseret. "A remembrance and a reunion," she had promised them, "in honor of Ceirdwyn and all her work." Five of the women had been raised by Ceirdwyn in other schools. Most of the others had known her, either as teacher or friend. "You can relax here," Chelle had added as enticement. "The school is on holy ground."

Living with the Game was never relaxing, and Karla and Raven had been spreading the word about the reunion for the past two years. On Earth, Cassandra encouraged all the female immortals she knew. And so the women came.

Karla arrived first, from the Sister School on Caledonia, where she taught the Art of War. A few young ones came, then Cassandra and Raven shepherding preimmortal children, then Elena with her family, then the rest. Amanda was last to arrive, only minutes before the program began.

"Where's Methos?" Cassandra asked her at the gatehouse.

"Still at the spaceport with the project. He'll be here soon." Amanda handed luggage to Cassandra and Karla and picked up two more bags. "What's the count?"

"Three men and seventeen women, now that you and Methos are here," Cassandra told her as they started walking across the lawn to the lodge, a low building with a portico of red stone, glinting in the bright light of the midday sun. High in the sky, two crescent moons gleamed. Cassandra still found this alien sky and alien world unnerving. Amanda seemed perfectly at ease, but she had lived on this planet a century ago.

Karla gave the status update: "Urushan and Robert de Valincourt are keeping watch, and the women are in the main hall with Chelle, ready to start."

Amanda nodded. "Who are the four missing women?"

"Evann was already briefed by Methos," Cassandra said, "and Umeado and Bastiri aren't friendly."

"We'll have to deal with those two soon," Amanda noted.

"We will," Karla promised.

"Who's the fourth no-show?" Amanda asked.

"Yladan ni Hamsi." Cassandra had read the report only three days before. "She just lost her head."

"Oh, no," Amanda said with dismay. "I liked her. Was it Ruten?"

"No." Cassandra did not name the killer. He didn't deserve to be remembered.

"I thought the Tribunal had sanctioned Ruten last year," Karla said, pushing open a door with her hip.

"We did." Amanda went through the doorway, speaking back over her shoulder. "But he hasn't been brought in yet. He went off-planet and then..."

Space was deep. Cassandra followed Amanda into the welcome dimness of the lodge.

"To happen now, when we're so close." Amanda shook her head, as if to keep the knowledge away. "It's such a waste."

All the deaths had been a waste, sacrifices in a pointless game for a nonexistent prize, for thousands of years. Today, finally, that would begin to change. Cassandra was determined on that.

They stowed the luggage in Amanda's room then went to join the other women in the main hall. The windows had already been shuttered against the fierce sunshine, and Karla closed the doors, making the room secure. The building was locked down, too, and the school. Urushan and Robert were seeing to that.

During the meal, Cassandra took note of who sat with whom: Chelle joined Damo and Okhsat, the devoted pair. Raven sat with her students, Cassie and Liza, and their students: Lo'siq and Ji Yoon. Amanda took the last seat at that table. Elena was regaling Aspen and Navi with a story of exciting bandit days, and at the corner table Erianne and Reagan and Mauvit were discussing swords with Karla. Cassandra wasn't interested in weapons, and she had heard Elena's stories before, so she joined Chelle.

As the meal finished, her wristcom glowed. "Methos arrived," Urushan sent to her and the other three Keepers. "Project safe. School secured."

No one was getting in or out now. Cassandra took a moment for prayer. Beginnings could be fragile times.

Chelle called the room to order and welcomed them all then spoke of Ceirdwyn's legacy of schools. She shared video of the twenty-three pre-immortal children who would live at this new facility. The last picture was of a toddler, adorably wide-eyed with wonder, and many of the women make the cooing sound of mothers. Even centuries of sword-fighting didn't erase that instinct. "This is the youngest," Chelle announced. "Fourteen months old."

"It's good to find them early," Aspen said with approval.

"But rare," Raven said. "The youngest I've ever found was a three-year-old."

Lo'siq sighed. "If only we knew where we came from..."

Cassandra had been expecting someone to say something like that. Though if no one had, Karla would have mentioned it. This conversation had been planned.

"Actually," Chelle said, "we know where she came from. We have video of the birth."

A babble of voices broke out, a whirlwind of disbelief and surprise. "You can't," Liza said.

"We do," Chelle told everyone, and the video began, showing a dark-haired women in a non-descript room. She was seated at a table and eating a huge meal.

"That's Amanda!" Elena called out, and more murmurs of surprise scuttled round the room as people turned to stare. Amanda smiled back calmly with one hand raised.

"What is this?" Raven demanded. "A joke?"

"Wait," Karla said to her fellow veteran. "Watch." For in the video, Amanda had stood up from the table, revealing an unclothed body ripe and rounded with early pregnancy. Cassandra had watched this video dozens of times, and it still brought tears to her eyes.

"Hell of a costume," Liza noted.

"It's not a costume," Amanda replied. "It was real."

Lo'siq shook her head. "No."

"Check the timestamp," Karla advised. It jumped twenty minutes every fifteen seconds, and in two minutes they watched nearly three hours of pregnancy. On the screen, Amanda looked about six months gone. One minute later, she looked full term. The video slowed to show the birth, and with Cassandra and Chelle as midwives, Amanda gave birth to a girl.

Elena murmured, "Madre de Dios," and Navi cursed soft and low. The other women were either silent or making tiny sounds of disbelief or awe. A moment later in real time and thirty minutes later by the video timestamp, the healing was done, Amanda's body was slim again, and the baby was fast asleep.

Chelle stopped the video, and Aspen immediately scoffed, "That's dingo doo. A fake. It has to be."

"It's real," Amanda repeated.

"But we can't have children," Lo'siq protested, and five others agreed.

"We can," Amanda said. "And we do. You saw me give birth, and you'll meet Talin—my daughter—today."

The objections erupted, subsiding only when Raven got to her feet. "Is this from your research, Chelle?" Raven asked. "Genetic engineering? Some new hormone therapy?"

Chelle shook her head. "It's not new."

Cassandra stood, gathering the gazes of all the women she could. "It's very old," she told them, then laced her next words with persuaders and truth. "We've been giving birth for thousands of years. All of us are mothers, or can be someday." Raven and others were shaking their heads, and the rest were looking confused. Cassandra had known a single sentence with the Voice wouldn't be enough to convince them. She hadn't dared to fully believe it herself, not until Talin had slid into her hands, slippery and warm and new to the world.

"I've never given birth to a child," Elena declared, and a chorus of "Nor I" arose.

"I would have said that, too," Amanda said. "I have absolutely no memory of that day. When they showed me the baby, they had to tell me it was mine."

"How could you not remember?" Navi demanded.

"The birth process interferes with formation of long-term memory," Chelle explained. "You're awake and alert during the event, but you don't remember it, because your brain never makes permanent connections. It's not just us; mortal women sometimes have hazy or missing memories of birth."

"That may be," Erianne said slowly. "But mortal women don't go through a whole pregnancy that fast."

"They don't heal fast, either," Mauvit pointed out. "But we do."

Navi was still shaking her head. "I say it's nonsense. A lie."

"Why would we do that?"Karla asked calmly. "What possible reason would we have to come up with such a tale?"

"Live Raven said earlier: a joke?" Navi shrugged. "Maybe you think it's funny. Or maybe it's an experiment, and you're seeing how we react." She got to her feet. "I'm not a lab rodent."

Cassandra signaled Methos through her wristcom. On cue, a door opened and a toddler walked in. Navi stopped where she was. "Mama?" the girl called, searching the room with wide eyes. "Mama?"

"I'm here, sweetie," Amanda said, stepping out from behind a table. The little girl ran straight to her, and Amanda swept her up in her arms. "Ladies," she announced, turning so that all could see, "this is my daughter, Talin."

Silence dripped over the room, a mix of fascination and reluctance, until finally Lo'siq asked: "So who's the father?"

"I am," Methos said, stepping in through the doorway. Behind him, the latch clicked shut.

Navi slowly sank back down into her chair. Elena stared first at Methos and then at Amanda. "This is your 'project'?" Elena demanded. "A child?"

Methos answered her with a raised eyebrow and a hint of a shrug. Amanda nodded and smiled before asking, "Isn't she beautiful?"

"Yes, but..." Elena stared with narrowed eyes at them and the girl, and then at Cassandra. "How long have you known?"

Cassandra had expected Elena to be annoyed, and so she added soothing tones to her words. "Almost two years."

"And you didn't tell me?" Elena swung around to Methos and Amanda again. "You two stayed at my house for a week, and you didn't tell me?"

"They didn't tell me, either," Raven pointed out. "Nor did Chelle announce it in her invitation to this 'reunion and remembrance'." She looked around the room at all the women. "We needed to hear it together."

"Yes," Cassandra agreed, grateful for her support. Raven was well respected, and her students and their students would follow her lead. "And we wanted to be able to show you proof."

"The video and the child." Navi shook her head. "The video could be faked, and the child picked up off the street."

"But she wasn't," Methos replied with calm certitude. He went to the table at the front of the room and sat down facing them all, like a judge presiding over a courtroom, a king holding court. "She's my daughter. I was with Amanda the entire time, all six hours, from the beginning through the pregnancy, and I watched Talin be born."

Amanda joined him at the table, and Talin crawled from her arms into his. She reached up and patted his nose, a favorite game between them, and so he made a face that made her giggle and made many of the women sigh. Cassandra looked away.

"How did you find out?" Erianne called from the back of the room.

"I don't care about 'how," Mauvit said, getting to her feet. "What I want to know is: do I have children? Are they here now?" She stared at Chelle with pleading eyes. "Can I see them?"

Mauvit's hands were curled and her fingers were twitching, and Cassandra heard the unsaid words: Can I touch them? Can I hold them in my arms? That instinct also ran deep, and she knew that hunger well. So did most women, and half of them were unconsciously leaning forward, yearning.

"We're not sure who is related to who," Chelle warned them. "But we do have a list of when and where all the children at this school were found." She nodded to Amanda, who forwarded a file to all the tablets in the room. "If you were nearby at the right time," Chelle went on, "you might be the mother."

"Just do genetic testing," Aspen said impatiently.

"That shows if you're related and by how much, but not necessarily how," Chelle reminded her. "Our family tree is a family thicket, where your great-grandmother can be your mother and your third cousin twice removed and also your half-sister, so it's not much help. Also, Immortals mutate quite a lot. That's why we don't always resemble our parents, and why the tests we did centuries ago said we weren't related."

Nods of understanding fluttered their heads like flowers in a breeze, and though seven of them looked unconvinced, Cassandra was pleased that at least they were still listening. Chelle had been worried that some might stomp out of the room. Navi still might, and Damo and Okhsat looked mutinous. They would need exit interviews before they were allowed to leave.

Chelle handed out tablets to everyone. "Fill out the form here, and it will help you find out who your children are."

The women sat back down, and heads and hands bent to the task. "Memory gaps, stories of foundlings...," Lo'siq muttered. Then she lifted her head. "The name of every single immortal man I've ever slept with, plus dates and places?"

"This is going to take a while," Elena said, and laugher rippled around the room.

"Not for me." Raven pushed her table aside. "I've filled in the last few decades, in case any of the preimmortals are mine, but I'm not going any farther back than that."

"Don't you want to know?" her student Liza asked.

"Know that I've slept with my own children? Or worse, killed them?" Raven shook her head. "I don't want to know."

Karla nodded. "I understand."

Last year, Cassandra had held Karla's hand as she had read her results: positive maternal matches to eleven children and tentative matches to a dozen more, plus another forty or so marked "not excluded." Of those sixty, Karla had taken the heads of four of them. Of the positive matches, only one was still alive. His name was Ruten.

Cassandra hadn't wanted to read her own report, either.

"I don't get it," Reagan said, as the muted sounds of tapping on tablets continued. "Why did no one ever notice? For thousands of years?"

"Some did," Methos said. "In the Watcher Chronicles, there are dozens of field reports of female immortals with infants, and in many cases the woman is described as the 'mother'. Those reports were 'corrected', because all the experienced Watchers already knew immortals couldn't have children."

Reagan waved an impatient hand. "So Watchers were blinded by their tradition. Were we blind, too? You're saying that not one of us noticed the gaps in our memory? The blood on our clothes?" She added with heavy emphasis: "The baby?"

"We noticed," Karla replied. "But we didn't want to know."

Cassandra tried to explain. "We're immortals; blood on our clothes is normal. Blackouts are, too. As for the babies ... we don't keep them. We can't nurse them, and we don't remember them. Soon after the birth, Amanda carried Talin to another woman's room, then walked away."

Lo'siq frowned. "That's a strange reproductive strategy.'

"There are stranger," Ji Yoon told her. "The cuckoo bird of Earth lays its eggs in other birds' nests; the yinhat of Canopia always gives birth in the same den as a graon, and then the graon rears all the young, while the yinhat hunts for them both. And biologically, it makes sense for a female Immortal to abandon an infant if she can't feed it."

"How many of you remember hearing of a newborn left nearby?" Chelle asked them all. "And then walking away, because you _knew_ it wasn't yours?"

All the women had stories to tell of infants unclaimed. Cassandra had a dozen of her own:

\- The timid slave-girl Livia, in a grove of olive trees near the Tiber River, "I heard they found a baby, Mistress, on the steps of the Temple of Diana."

\- Roland, in a small white-washed room with one barred window, saying, "I found this abandoned infant earlier today," while an old servant woman stood in the doorway with a baby in her arms.

\- Old Brigid, the witch of Donan Woods, her sharp eyes the hard blue of winter-skies, "Found a newborn babe just t'other day, left nearby the path, here in the forest."

\- Connor in the village of Glenfinnan, handing her an infant, relief plain on his face, "Some village girl must have given birth in your shed. I found the babe in the straw when I came back."

\- Agnes, as the waves curled onto the sand on the isle of Lesbos and a young girl ran shrieking and laughing along the shore, "My husband found her, in the gardens, a few years back."

There had been other children, other times, and probably others Cassandra had never known. Would never know.

"Write those stories down," Chelle encouraged the women in the room. "All of them. Your chronicles are available on your tablets to help you remember."

The women went back to the task, with muttering at one table and giggling at another. The table with Okhsat and Demo was silent, and they leaned back in their chairs with arms folded.

Chelle and Amanda were sorting through the reports as they came in, cross-checking the data and mapping locations. When a few dozen reports had been processed, Amanda looked up from her work to ask: "Is there anyone here who _hasn't_ slept with Duncan MacLeod?"

_Note: Sandra MacDonald came up with the idea of immortal women having children quickly and then forgetting all about it. Used in this story-universe by permission._


	12. 3c Hopes: the desert to the mountains

**from the desert to the mountains**

* * *

When Damo and Okhsat left the dining hall, Cassandra followed them into the passageway and called their names.

They stopped and turned, though clearly impatient to leave. "This is nonsense," Damo told her. "All this business about children."

"I know it seems incredible, Damo," Cassandra said, using the other woman's name to establish connection. As she came closer, she could see their narrowed eyes and tense muscles around their mouths. "I didn't think it real either," Cassandra said. They relaxed a little, enjoying that vindication, and she reached out and touched each lightly on the arm, registering their reactions, the feel of their skin, the lift of their chins. Their emotional state was nearly identical, for they'd been partners for centuries and seldom disagreed. They were even mirroring each others' posture, down to the angle between their feet.

Cassandra was glad she could keep her focus tight. "But there is more to the story," she told them, layering enticers into her tones. Their heads tilted, a sign of curiosity, and Cassandra added controls: "You should find out what." She looked first at Okhsat and then at Damo while instructing them: "You want to learn. You need to know."

Damo turned to Okhsat. "I think we should go back in the room. Just to hear."

"Yes," Okhsat agreed. "We need to know."

"I think that's wise," Cassandra commented, and the three of them returned to the hall. Karla watched their progress between the tables, spoke briefly into her wristcomm, and then locked the doors.

While Cassandra had been convincing Okhsat and Damo to stay, the other women had decided to paste stickers that were labeled with names and dates then connect them with colored strings to show some of the intertwined branches of the Immortal family tree, so that everyone could help make sense of it all. Chelle was transferring that information into a memory crystal.

Erianne, a sticker in her hand, turned from the wall to stare at Cassandra. "You're Duncan MacLeod's mother?"

Once they'd known about the children, Cassandra had realized that immediately. No other immortal woman had been living near Glenfinnan in 1592. "Yes."

Liza traced a red line to another name. "And his grandmother?"

"Yes." She'd immediately known who Duncan's father was, too.

_"!Maria Santisima!"_ Elena whispered then took Cassandra's hand in her own. "Oh, Cassandra! Ramirez and Connor and Duncan?"

Cassandra nodded. She'd gone to the Highlands with Ramirez only because the Prophecy had foretold a child born on the winter solstice in the northlands, and a century later, she herself had made the prophecy come true.

"So Connor was Duncan's father. And brother." Elena's eyes glimmered with tears. "And they never knew."

"They lived as brothers." Cassandra took comfort in that. Two of her sons had loved each other. They had not lived their lives alone. And each had known his father, even if only as a teacher when he was grown.

Erianne, however, was looking rather ill. "You slept with your own son? And then you slept with your grandson, too? Who was also your son?" She backed away from the wall, sticker forgotten in her hand, shaking her head. "Incest is disgusting."

"That was inbreeding," Chelle corrected, her voice loud enough to be heard by all. "Not incest. They didn't know they were related. There was never any child-parent relationship, and they were all adults. Incest is emotional, not biological."

Erianne frowned. "I suppose..."

"I'll bet most of us have slept with a close relative," Aspen said. She pointed at the wall. "Looks like I've got a half-brother and an uncle in my list of men."

"I think I married my father," Lo'siq shared then laughed quietly. "He looks younger than I do."

Methos, sitting against the wall with Talin asleep on his lap, reminded them: "We've got a family thicket, not a family tree. And it's complicated."

"It's bizarre," Liza complained. "And unbelievable." She waved a hand at the names on the wall. "Even if we women forget, I still can't believe our lovers and husbands never noticed us having babies. We lived together."

"You never went shopping in the morning and came back in the afternoon?" Mauvit asked. She reached for her cup of iced cider then leaned back in her chair. "Remember, it doesn't take long."

"But it doesn't always happen during the day." Liza turned to Chelle. "Does it?"

"No. Though we do hide when giving birth, like most mammals."

"We can't hide that well," Raven asserted. "Not all of us, not for thousands of years. Sometimes we weren't even allowed out of the house."

In the Horseman days, at the beginning, Methos hadn't let Cassandra leave the tent. Two years ago, when they had learned this truth, he had promptly reassured her that they hadn't found any infants while she was with them. She hadn't asked what the Horsemen had done with the infants they had found in other years. She didn't want to know.

Because she did know—and couldn't forget—what Roland had done.

"Look, Cassandra," Roland said to her, on a warm spring day thousands of years ago, as she sat in her small tiny-windowed room, surrounded by the weaving he had finally permitted her. Roland snapped his fingers, and the deaf guard stepped back from the heavy wooden door, allowing entrance to a stooped, white-haired woman who held a small bundle wrapped in cloth. "I found this abandoned infant earlier today," Roland told her, then glanced at the baby before he went back to watching her. "It's a pre-immortal, I believe."

"Yes," she agreed, wishing she could hold the baby, yet not daring to move. She could just barely sense the faint hum of pre-Immortal, a whisper of a touch at the back of her neck.

"Odd, that they just seem to … appear, wouldn't you say?"

Cassandra shrugged helplessly. No one knew where Immortals came from, and she'd stopped wondering about it. She didn't wonder about anything anymore.

"Have you ever seen an infant Immortal before?" Roland asked with avid curiosity.

"No." Cassandra hadn't seen any infants for three—or was it four?—months. Roland hadn't let her out of the house.

"No?" Roland repeated, and then he smiled slowly. "No." He came over to kneel by her side and take her hand in his, a gentle touch. His gray eyes were concerned, helpful, loving. "Would you like to keep it? I know you've been lonely."

"We could—," she began eagerly, smiling at him, hoping, praying … but in the next instant his eyes darkened with cold anger, and his fingers tightened around hers. Cassandra froze, not daring even to breathe.

"No," he said softly, sincerely regretful, his eyes loving and concerned once again. "I shouldn't expect so much of you. We both know you're not fit to be a mother. Don't we, Cassandra?" he asked with a soft patting of her hand, and she knew what he wanted to hear.

"Yes," she agreed immediately, the word thick and heavy on her tongue. She would never give birth to a child, and that was for the best.

He nodded, well-pleased with her—for now. "Put it on the floor and get out," he ordered the slave-woman, and the swaddled infant was laid in the corner. It whimpered and started to cry. Roland nodded to the guard, and the door was shut and bolted. Cassandra knew that sound well.

"Roland…," she ventured, her hands twitching with the urge to comfort the child, but Roland drew his sword, a cold slithering of metal. "No!" she cried, and leapt toward them, reaching for the baby, but Roland whirled and thrust the blade straight into her heart, then shoved her off his sword and onto the floor. "Please," she whispered through the bubbling blood in her mouth, but Roland had already skewered the child against the wall.

She revived to find herself gagged and bound, as usual, but this time there were two other Immortals in the room. Roland took his time with the baby, experimenting and investigating, and Cassandra closed her eyes. She couldn't close her ears. Finally, Roland grew bored and took the infant's head with a blessedly merciful slice. She kept her eyes closed during the Quickening and during the rape that followed, but she couldn't close her eyes during her dreams, and she could never forget those anguished, pitiful wails.

The next time Roland brought her a stranger's infant and asked her if she wanted to keep it, Cassandra pretended indifference and just kept chopping the turnips for their midday meal. "No, I don't want to be bothered taking care of a baby," she told him, then added a happy smile and a loving caress on his arm, hoping to persuade him. "I don't need anyone else. I have you."

Her ploy didn't work. "Well, since you don't want it …," Roland began, taking the knife.

"Some other woman might be willing to raise it," Cassandra suggested quickly, trying to keep the desperation from her voice.

"So it can grow up to come after our heads?" he retorted, reaching for the child.

"No!" she called out, coming after him, but Roland's knife was instantly at her throat, and his other hand was wound tightly in her hair.

"It's best this way," he told her, then insisted she agree, the knife slicing deeper into her skin with each word. "Isn't it? Isn't it?"

"No," she spat at him, struggling, and the knife plunged deeper still.

Roland tortured that baby for five days before he finally beheaded it, and he kept her chained to a wall and watching the entire time. Three hundred years later, when he had found another infant and asked her, "It's best this way, isn't it?" Cassandra had nodded numbly and agreed.

All these centuries, she had remembered what Roland had done, but only two years ago had she had truly realized all he had done. For when she had told the outline of the tale to the other Keepers, Methos had asked, "How many infants did you see Roland kill?"

"Three."

"All boys."

It wasn't a question, and Cassandra suddenly knew why. She closed her eyes and turned away, but she couldn't avoid the horror slithering down her throat and into her heart.

"There used to be a chronicle on Roland," Methos was saying. "The last time I saw it was when Charlemagne was on the throne. When Roland was living in Carthage, he raised a preimmortal from infancy then married her when she turned fifteen."

Cassandra knew what that woman's life had been like, and how she had died. "And eventually, he took her head."

"Yes. And once before in Egypt and then in—"

"Stop," Cassandra pleaded, for she was imagining what that little girl's life had been like, all those little girls' lives, all her daughters. How many had there been? Just those three? Or more?

Eventually, she forced herself to look through the records and dredge up memories to piece together the clues, nauseatingly horrific and cruel. She had long assumed that Roland had kept her until he grew bored or found something else he'd rather do. And so he had, by keeping her as a breeder until she gave him a baby girl he could own and use and destroy.

Five of them, over the centuries, and all dead now, along with her sons, devoured by their own sire. Roland had hated children, even—or especially?—his own.

Cassandra reached for her mug of iced cider and closed her eyes as she wrapped her hands around the welcome coolness, willing her fingers not to tremble, refusing to relive those nightmares anymore. She inhaled the spicy bitter fragrance of fermented apples and bava, then sipped and swallowed several times before she felt ready to open her eyes.

The women were still debating whether it was possible to keep such a secret from so many people for so long.

"As to that," Methos said, "perhaps we should hear from an Immortal husband."

The door opened, and Robert de Valincourt came in, a charming and handsome man with a gleam in his eye and a touch of a pirate still in his soul. He hitched one leg over the back of a chair and put his booted foot on the seat to tell his tale. "Gina and I were married for four hundred fifty-seven years. During that time, she gave birth to four children."

"And you didn't keep them?" Erianne said in surprise.

"I wanted to." He looked over at Talin, nestled comfortably in Methos's lap, and swallowed hard before turning back to the group. "But Gina didn't. When I showed her the first baby, she said it wasn't hers. And she said she didn't want to be a mother. I tried to convince her. But then she said no child would be safe as a pre-immortal living with two immortals, that we would draw attention to it."

Liza nodded sadly. "She was right."

"That she was," Robert agreed, his lips pressed tight.

Most Immortals eventually learned the truth of that pain. Children would be taken as hostages or made immortal too soon and then slaughtered for their quickening. At these schools they were better protected, but most families didn't live behind locked gates with armed guards.

"I fostered the children with good families," Robert said, "and I watched them from afar. When the time came, I even took one as my student." His gaze went to the wall, where Gina's name had four blue lines coming from it. "They're all dead now."

Of the dozens Cassandra had birthed, she know of only one still alive: young Shariade, now here at the school. She would never know her father, and Connor would never know her.

He would have wanted to.

"How many others know about this?" Raven asked Chelle. "Who else have you told?"

"We've told Evann and Urushan. Others might know, the way Robert did, but not from us."

"And why didn't you tell anyone else where we came from?" Lo'siq called out to Robert.

His exasperated smile was the same as Methos's had been when asked about that about the Game. So was his answer: "I did try."

"Not with me," Mauvit said stonily, and hard gazes bored into him from a dozen faces.

"You know now," Robert said simply then stood, exchanged nods with Methos, and left the room.

After the door had shut behind him, Reagan said, "But we don't know, not really. Even if we can say where we came from, we still don't know where _immortals _came from."

"Our Waramurungundi and Wururgag," Aspen said wistfully. "Our Immortal Eve and Adam."

"It wasn't just two people," Methos said, and when people turned to look at him, sitting innocuously on the floor and holding a sleeping child, he informed them: "It was eight."

Now Methos received the stony stares. "More secrets," Reagan said suspiciously. "More amazing facts about immortals that you just happen to know."

"We don't 'just happen' to know," Cassandra corrected, drawing attention away from Methos. He would get that soon enough. "We went looking, and we used the Methuselah Stone."

Raven came alert. "Rebecca's crystals?" A murmur of interest ran around the room. "You found them all?" At Cassandra's nod, Raven asked. "Where is it? Can we see it?"

Amanda stood and held the orb high, then handed to Raven, who eventually passed it along to others at the table.

"Like many crystals, it's a storage device," Cassandra continued, as the orb went from hand to hand. "And it has many stories to tell."

Chelle started the video. Just five months ago, they had learned how to download from the crystal into their equipment, which meant everyone could see at once, instead of taking turns at the orb.

The screen showed a lovely valley and a small village, viewed from a hillside. A thin blue line of a river ran through lush green. Nearby, sheep and goats browsed, and an eagle soared overhead. A boy of twelve or so, clad in leather shoes and a tunic woven of wool, was throwing rocks with impressive accuracy.

"When is this supposed to be?" Raven asked.

"About fifty-five hundred years ago," Cassandra answered. "Earth, on the continent Eurasia."

"And who's that boy?"

"His name was Pavish," Methos answered. "My cousin."

"Cousin? But—"

"Our mothers were sisters. Those are my memories, from the early days."

Mutters of astonishment ran around the room, and the story went on. Amanda had added music and Urushan had sequenced a wealth of images, for other people's memories had also been stored within the orb. Cassandra narrated as the women watched, her voice compelling and true.

She told of a village, prosperous and peaceful, for many of its people had the gift. They were far-seers and far-speakers, prophets and dowsers, wise in the way of dreams and skilled in crafts. Knowing much, they ever sought to know more.

They learned to unlock powers hidden deep within, the flame of life in every cell, blue-white like the bolts of the thunder god. This flame could cure, it could heal. It carried life essence and memory and power. But the flame was too bright, it blasted and burned.

So their craftspeople crafted four talismans to contain and channel the power: an orb of crystal, a blade of power, a cup of seeing, a staff of life. Then with those objects they created more: a truthstone, a diadem, a flute for the dead, the sacred weaving, and a sickle that harvested more than grain. Each had its keeper, sworn to use the talisman wisely and well.

Their knowledge, they agreed, precious and hard-won, should not die with the learners or stay only in their village. They had a duty to message of hope and healing to the world beyond.

And so they chose four priests and four priestesses, young and strong. They altered their life strands so that their children would be strong enough to carry the flame. In time, a score of youngsters had been born, all with the strand hidden deep within.

"The crystal can release the life-power within them," the eldest healer explained to the parents. "After that, they will not age."

"They are forced to live forever?" asked a mother of two of these children: a dark-haired girl and boy.

"No." The healer held up the orb, glimmering silver in his hand. "When your children weary of immortality, they can use the orb to transfer the life-essence to another of their kin, then age and die as all must do."

"There are twenty children, and there is only one orb," a father objected.

The master of crafts took the orb, and she hummed until it opened into twenty crystal petals. "Each child shall have a crystal, to help them find each other and guide them on their way, to reach out to all living things, to share knowledge with each other, and to heal and teach as they travel in the world."

But not all who lived in the village believed the power should be shared. "Our enemies will use it against us," some said. "We should keep it for ourselves." And so they set out to kill the children and their parents, too.

The early killings came easy—Pavish was the first to die—but then a battle began. The young people fought alongside their parents, and one caught hold of the orb, holding it high in one hand. Her tunic hung stiff with dried blood.

"Stop—" she began, but an enemy holding the blade of power sliced clean, separating her head and body in a fountain of crimson. All her life-essence spiraled into the orb, trapped there in a whirling vortex of voracious light, mingling with the essence of those who had already died that day. Then the energy exploded outward, splintering the orb and slicing into the minds of everyone nearby, bolts of white-blue lightning stripping their nerves with pain.

White chaos ravaged all the people in the village that day, followed by red fires burning high. Rain came that night, and in the morning, smoldering ash lay atop shattered stones that covered bodies, broken and burned.

Only the pre-immortals had survived, and only twelve of those, but they stared at each other with uncomprehending eyes, not knowing name or kin. The orb's power could not kill them, but their minds had been blasted away. In time, they wandered off, some in groups, some alone, a dark-haired boy and girl hand-in-hand. Two carried crystals they had found in the ashes. One carried a sword.

The final image showed a lone figure, walking across a grassland.

Cassandra waited until the scene was starting to fade and people began to look at her. "Thus immortals went into the world, not knowing where they came from or who their parents were," she told them. "They did not know their quickening could be shared with others, or that they could transfer memories and power through the orb." She met their gazes, one by one. "They did not know that Immortals had been created to be healers and teachers, carrying knowledge down through the ages and across the world."

The painful silence of lost chances and shattered dreams was broken by Erianne, who announced: "Well, we fucked that up."

Thanks to the four Horsemen. The Lady of the Temple had taught all her students to go forth and serve.

"But the story got it wrong," Aspen objected. "We turn immortal the first time we die; we don't get activated by a crystal."

"Or deactivated," Raven added, a thoughtful look on her face.

Some people exchanged glances at that; some would not meet anyone's gaze. Many looked around the room, searching to see who held the orb now. Karla carried it to the front of the room and set it on the table for all to see. Cassandra moved toward the back of the room and leaned against a wall, the better to observe everyone's reactions.

"A Keeper uploaded her memory into an orb crystal about a century after the village was destroyed," Chelle reported. "She suggested the blast that wiped memories also triggered permanent changes in how quickenings work."

"Wait." Okhsat was finally participating. "Mortals can use the crystals?"

"Up to a point, if they're trained. Remember: the quickening is the life force; everything alive has some. We just have a lot more."

"Can we stop being immortal?" Raven asked.

"We don't know." Chelle shrugged. "None of us were ready for that step. We also haven't tried activating any of the pre-immortals at the school. They're too young."

"Can we heal mortals?" Mauvit demanded.

"Yes, that part of the Methuselah Stone legend is true. Three immortals have transferred some of their quickening into mortals and healed them."

Mauvit's lips pressed tight, and Erianne muttered, "Holy shit."

The room went silent with painful remembering. Cassandra had long ago lost count of how many wounded or dying mortals she had tended to, wishing she could share that power and instead watching people suffer and die.

"So, this orb can turn us mortal," Okhsat said slowly, "and we can use it get someone else's power and knowledge..."

"But with the orb, you don't have to chop off their heads to get it." Raven looked at Karla. "Right?"

"Right," Karla agreed. "And the information's not scrambled like it is during a quickening. Last week with a crystal, I learned a new language in about five minutes."

Aspen started laughing, pounding on the table with one hand and wiping tears away with the other. Eventually she gasped, "You mean I can finally learn calculus?"

More laughter skittered around the room, sympathetic with understanding and high-pitched with a tinge of hysteria, though others seemed affronted or annoyed. Cassandra knew they all were on edge, still confused and nearly overwhelmed. This was all too much, too fast, too new. Yet one more revelation remained, and they couldn't keep all these people locked in a room much longer, so it had to be soon.

Cassandra was about to flash Chelle the signal to start the conversation, when Okhsat stood, her hands firmly planted on her hips.

"Today, you've told us we can have children, that we've been having children for centuries." Okhsat glared at Chelle and Amanda and Karla in turn, all three at the front of the room. Methos, fondly gazing down at his sleeping daughter on his lap, and Cassandra, standing in the far corner, escaped the severe gaze.

"You've told us how Immortals got started ages ago, and where the Methuselah Stone and the other talismans got made," Okhsat continued. "But what about the Prize?" People were nodding, murmuring agreement and looking toward the orb. Okhsat leaned forward, now planting her fists knuckles-down on the table. "What about the Game?"

"Yes, well." Methos cleared his throat but stayed sitting on the floor, his arms wrapped around a little girl, with an air of charming appeal. "About that..."


	13. 3d Hopes: it's you who cannot accept

**it's you who cannot accept**

* * *

"Look on the bright side," Amanda said with far more cheerfulness than Methos felt was warranted after he'd just finished explaining the origins of the Game to a roomful of ferociously irritated people. "No one tried to kill you."

"Yet." Methos leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, stretching his legs just a bit under Talin's weight. His left foot had gone to sleep, and he rather urgently needed to relieve his bladder, but he wasn't going to disturb her. She'd probably just saved his life.

"Good thing Talin was here," Chelle said as she stacked dirty dishes on a table. "People didn't want to yell too loud and wake her up. It could have been a lot worse."

Methos didn't bother to open his eyes or correct her. It wasn't over.

He had not been looking forward to this day, even though they'd been working toward it for two years. In another life—in most of his other lives, actually—he would have walked away from all of this. Just disappeared without a word, gone off and invented himself anew, leaving everything and everyone behind.

It was still a very tempting idea. But he had obligations now, and he had made a promise to see this through. Duncan and Vibia would have wanted him to.

Chelle dropped a dish, and at the clatter Methos started and Talin awoke, blinking a little. She looked up then smiled. "Daddy," she announced.

"Yes," Methos told her, holding her small hand in his own. "I'm here."

Talin needed him to be.

* * *

All the rest of that day and far into the night, the conversations and the questions continued, in the midst of the women figuring out the family thicket and visiting the children—_their_ children—at the school. Some people declared they should set up a hospital to heal people; others said that was insane: the mortals would lock them up and suck them dry. Some wanted to tell their sons and fathers right away; others thought it best to keep that secret from the men.

Should the children stay at their school or live with their parents? And how exactly did immortal-pregnancy work, anyway? Mortals were fertile once a month. Were immortals fertile once a year? A decade? A century? And what can we do about birth control?

What were all these talismans and Keepers, anyway? And what about the Game? Did the Tribunal still work? Just how sure were they, really, that there was no prize? And what about Holy Ground?

Cassandra was kept busy soothing people so that they would listen to each other and not stomp away, Karla and Urushan kept the gates locked and the place secure, Amanda tried to make sure everyone got a turn with the orb to experience the memories first-hand, and Chelle worked on the immortal family tree. And all of them answered questions. Methos considering writing down the common ones and their answers and handing that out to everyone who walked in his door.

Did the Keepers start the Watchers? –No.

How did a Keeper survive if everyone in the village died? –Not all the Keepers were in the village that day.

Where are the other talismans? –Ask a Keeper.

Who picks the new Keepers? –The old Keepers.

How come I'm not a Keeper? –Ask a Keeper. I'm not one, either.

But you were one of the Four Horsemen? –A long time ago.

How old are you? –Very.

So you must have fathered dozens of children? –No, most of my partners have been mortals.

Oh. Would you father a child on me?

Methos would have left the answer to that last one blank. It needed thinking about. Aspen was the first to ask it. Then Elena, then Erianne, and then Lo'siq, each in varying degrees of frankness and immediacy. Even Raven was looking at him a certain speculative gleam in her eye.

Elena had another question: "Did you ever meet our son? Or our daughter?" She held their pictures in her hand, printed from the archives: [Amador Rolon Herrero, 1999-2095] and [Miscette bar-Rakel, 2347-2382]. Neither of them had lived a full century.

"No," Methos answered gently, and they sat down together and spoke of their children's lives. Their awkward farewell kiss mingled sorrow and affection, bitter and sweet.

Quite of few of the other women, however, wanted nothing to do with him. They got up and left the room if he walked in. Some swore at him on the way out. Methos didn't mind that so much. At least he knew they were angry with him.

It was the silent ones that worried him, and the ones he didn't see.

* * *

So the next morning when he went for a walk and a woman he hadn't seen since the big reveal came at him with murderous intent and a naked blade, he wasn't surprised, even though Mauvit had been delighted about the children and one of the first to believe. "Don't do this," he warned, backing away, but Mauvit was determined, and so he drew his sword.

He stayed on the defensive at first, for he had no desire to hurt her, but Mauvit was viciously implacable and quite skilled, and they both ended up bloody before he disarmed her. "Let it be," he ordered her, his sword at her throat.

Mauvit glared at him, her chest heaving for more air, but her eyes steady with hate. "I'll have your head." Her tone was flat and unemotional, not even a warning, just a statement of fact.

So he killed her.

Karla and Chelle appeared then, dressed for running. Their gazes went from the bloody sword in his hand to the bloody body on the ground to the blood on his clothes. Methos felt the tingle of healing on his lip, touched that place with his tongue. He tasted blood, hot and salty and sweet.

Karla greeted him with a silent nod. Chelle was less restrained. "Are you going to take Mauvit's head?"

He didn't want to want to, but he did. So he wouldn't. He'd made that decision a very long time ago. He touched his cheek then looked at fingers, slick and bright with red. "No," he answered as he wiped his hand on his shirt. "A Tribunal should handle this."

"We can try calling one," Karla said, "but you should know: people are divided and uncertain."

Methos looked at the dead woman on the ground as he cleaned his blade. "Perhaps this is what they need to convince them."

Back in the lodge, Cassandra had additional concerns. "You have few friends here right now, Methos." She went with him down the hall. "A Tribunal may not be your best option."

He didn't slow his pace. "Can you get Mauvit to stop?"

"Today? Probably. Tomorrow?" Cassandra shrugged. "Judging from her chronicles, she's obsessive. Without repeated reinforcements to the contrary, obsessive desires usually reoccur."

"Her obsessive desire is for my head." Methos stopped with his hand on the door to his room. "Since leaving is not an option—" though he was reconsidering that—"unless she stops or someone stops her, either she'll take my head, or I'll take hers."

Cassandra didn't argue with that, but she did ask, "How many of us are you willing to kill?"

He wouldn't have called it "willing". Resigned, perhaps. Or maybe resolved. Because he wasn't willing to die. "As many as I have to."

Cassandra didn't argue with that, either.

Methos washed and changed his clothes, then he and the Keepers discussed strategy and options and possibilities. One of them involved him losing his head.

After that, Methos went to the children's center to play with his daughter. There were games of peek-a-boo and bouncy feet and silly noises. He sang Talin a lullaby then put her to bed for a nap. He tucked the blanket around her, kissed her fingers, her nose, and her forehead in that order, and (just in case) said goodbye.

"You'll win," Amanda said from the doorway. Her eyes were fierce yet bright with tears. "You're better than Mauvit."

Methos smiled at her but said nothing. Fights to the death didn't depend only on skill. "Remember what we agreed," he said. Just in case. "Karla and Cassandra and Chelle and Urushan will deal with Mauvit."

Amanda nodded, unhappy but resigned. "While I take care of Talin."

"Right." Their daughter shouldn't grow up an orphan. Methos and Amanda walked out of the children's center hand in hand.

Elena stood near the door, chatting with Cassandra, and she smiled when she saw them holding hands. "Don't you two look like proud parents," she greeted them with a bigger smile and a hug.

Methos supposed that meant he'd been forgiven—mostly—for not telling her earlier.

"And how are your boys, Elena?" Amanda asked as they started walking across the meadow.

"Loving the climbing wall, and all the children to play with. And very happy that I said they were old enough to come with me to the reunion this time. Akio was excited, too; he's never been past Jupiter before."

"Is he enjoying his time here?" Cassandra asked.

"Oh, yes! He said the Crystal Cavern was amazing, plus," Elena grinned, "he's doing very well in the tournament. He's an aikidoka, from the same school I trained at in Japan in the twentieth century. He's actually higher dan than I am. I'm more...," she paused to smile wickedly, "….aggressive, which is not a good quality for an aikidoka. That's how we met, on the sparring floor."

"Quite the tradition," Cassandra observed.

Methos was not sure if she meant the venerable art of aikido or Elena's penchant for marrying men who could fight with her.

At the porch of the dining hall, Cassandra stopped to look at the moons that hung low in the sky. Methos had spent many an evening doing the same, centuries before, when he and Duncan were the only people on the entire planet. They'd done a lot of exploring in those years. Unlike Cassandra. "You've never been off Earth before," Methos noted.

"No."

"Not even the Moon or Mars?" Methos asked. The reports he received on her might have missed a short trip.

"No."

Most immortals were more curious than that. "Why not?"

She smiled, more to herself than at him. "The Earth is my mother." With a fingertip, she traced the edge of a leaf on a kirin vine that climbed around a red stone pillar. Then she looked at the sky again, and then at him. "It's time to leave home."

And thus begin the journey of ten thousand steps to find the way.

Today's trip, however, would be more of a hard slog than a walk in the park. The hall was busy, and when he came in, people turned to stare. Mauvit was already seated at a table along with Navi, Reagan, Damo, Robert, and Okhsat, and they watched him cross the floor.

He wasn't all that interested in food. As agreed, Karla began the conversation about what rule of law immortals should have.

"What about the Tribunal?" young Ji Yoon wanted to know.

"That was created to stop Immortals who prey on the weak or the young or mortals," Aspen said.

Elena lifted her glass to him. "And you, _viejo_, are clearly none of those three things."

Methos didn't return that salute. From another table, Mauvit was watching him with vengeful eyes.

"That is why the Tribunal was started six hundred years ago, yes," Cassandra agreed. "But the Tribunal monitors all duels."

"Duels in the Game," Raven pointed out. "That's what I agreed to."

"And I," several others chimed in.

"And now we know—or at least he tells us," Navi said, pointing her laden fork at Methos, "that there is no Prize and that he invented the Game. It's all a sham." With her teeth, she pulled the impaled tomatilla off her fork then chewed.

Damo nodded. "Some of us talked about this last night: the Tribunal has no real authority. We're not children; we can determine right and wrong for ourselves. They should leave us alone."

"By the balls and bells of St. Ives," Methos muttered, calling down an imprecation against all arm-chair lawyers. Amanda laid her hand on his arm in calm support.

"Leave us alone to kill each other?" Erianne questioned. "How is that different than murder?"

Lo'siq was shaking her head. "A challenge isn't murder."

"If it's accepted," Karla retorted. "Then it's a duel. Otherwise, it's murder."

Some people were agreeing, some disagreeing, some just looked confused. Urushan stood, a bear of a man, slowly scratching his ear. "What would be dueling for?" he asked. "Not the prize, I presume."

"Honor," Damo said. "And glory."

"Justice." That from Elena.

"Revenge," Lo'siq added.

"Self-preservation," Erianne put in. "Kill them before they're strong enough to kill you."

"Money," Robert said, with the unabashed honesty of a pirate.

"For the thrill of it," Reagan said, another honest answer, from a warrior this time. "Fighting's fun."

"For the Quickening." Cassandra was the one to voice that brutal truth. She sounded disgusted yet resigned. "We want the power. We like the blood."

People avoided each others' gaze, but no one disagreed.

"Those all sound like motives for murder to me, or at best, vigilantism." Chelle's gaze swept the room. "Is that how we want to live?"

Damo shrugged. "It's how it's done."

Ah, tradition. Methos wasn't a fan.

"It's how it's been done," Urushan said. "We can change."

That, Methos did support.

"And it's not about how we want to live," Usushan continued. "It's about how we want to die."

"More importantly," Raven said slowly, "is that how we want our children to die? What kind of world do we want them to live in? A world where cutting off people's heads is _normal_?" She shook her head. "We shouldn't allow that."

"You can't just ban duels," Reagan declared, sounding angry. "You don't have that right."

Erianne began, "Maybe we could all decide—"

"No!" Navi interrupted. "You 'Keepers' and 'Tribunes' don't get to order the rest of us around. And we can't take a vote. Not all of us here, and most of the men don't even know anything about this."

Democracy, in Methos's opinion, was overrated as an effective form of government, though a consensus did encourage people to follow the rules. And if immortals were to survive as a community, they needed to decide how to behave. Now seemed a good time to start.

He stood and waited for people to look his way then announced, "Mauvit tried to kill me this morning."

"Good for her," Navi muttered.

Methos ignored that. "I don't want to fight."

Mauvit was on her feet. "Yet _you_ killed _me_."

"In self-defense," Methos replied. "You attacked first."

"I was on the ground and unarmed," Mauvit claimed, "and you stabbed me in the heart."

He shrugged. "It was the quickest way to stop it." He sat back down and waved a hand at the obviously-not-dead Mauvit. "No harm done."

"Harm _was_ done," Mauvit hissed, the hate still steady in her eyes. "All of my children are dead, and all because of _you_."

Chelle, keeper of the files, spoke up. "Mauvit, the records show that only one of your children was killed by Methos. Peter Shaw killed one. The other four—"

"Are dead," Mauvit snapped. "Because of the Game. Because of _him_."

Chelle shook her head, her eyes pitying, her words gentle. "Because of you."

All around the room, people winced or looked away, and Methos well understood why. To find out you had slept with your own children was unsettling. To realize you had killed them—killed four of them—was horrifying. And guilt-producing.

"I didn't _know_!" Mauvit cried, anguish twisting her features and strangling her words. "How could I know? None of us knew. Except _him_."

Now she pointed to Robert, and her hate was directed at him. In time, perhaps, Methos thought, she might direct that hate and rage where it truly belonged—at herself. But for now, she was blaming other people. It was easier that way.

"And I wouldn't have—" She cut that sentence short, bitterness etching the words. "It wouldn't have happened except for the Game." She glared at Methos again. "The Game that _he_ invented."

Not quite. But close enough. Methos knew where the blame belonged, and he didn't take the easy way. But he did move on.

"Many of us killed because of the Game," Raven said soothingly. "Because of the Prize. We didn't know about that, either."

"But now we do," Chelle said firmly. "So all of us should think: what choice do we make? For ourselves, and for our children."

"I am choosing for my children." Mauvit turned to Methos and stepped forward. "I choose to challenge you."

Methos stayed in his seat. "It won't bring them back." They couldn't bring any of them back. He held out his hands, palms up and open, trying to connect with her, and with them all. "We could choose for the children yet to come."

Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared, clear signs of rage beyond reason. "I challenge you," she repeated, the words flat and unemotional, the woman obsessed with grief and guilt.

"You don't want to do that!" Elena called. "He _will_ behead you."

"Don't you tell me what I want," Mauvit snapped, not even looking at Elena. Mauvit took another step toward Methos, her hands clenched. "You owe me."

Perhaps he did, in some fashion, but he could never restore the lives of her children. Certainly not by giving up his own head. They all had to move on. "I can't change the past; I wish I could. But I promise you: we can look to the future."

"Yes." She nodded, and then she smiled. "I will."

At that smile, Amanda stiffened beside him, and Methos uncoiled himself from his chair and stood. "Don't," he warned Mauvit, but she smiled again. Methos didn't need words to know what that meant. Her children were dead. She wanted his children dead, too.

Cassandra had warned them Mauvit might use this technique to draw him out; she'd done it before. Amanda rose and spoke to everyone in the room. "Mauvit is planning to kill Talin. Will we do nothing?"

"We can't punish someone just for thinking," Aspen said.

"Of course we can," Raven retorted. "Planning to commit murder is a crime."

"Oh, it won't be murder," Mauvit reassured them. "It'll be a challenge."

"Talin's a baby!"

Mauvit shrugged. "I can wait."

Methos wasn't going to, not any more. She'd had her chance, and so had all the other immortals in the room who wanted no rules at all. "I accept your challenge, Mauvit. Now."

Her nod was fiercely satisfied. "Good."

"But you just said you didn't want to fight," Erianne said to him in surprise.

"I don't," Methos said. "But I will." To protect his daughter, he would kill without hesitation or qualm. "That is how you want it, right?" he asked the watching crowd. "Each of us fighting our own battles? Each of us determining for ourselves the right and the wrong? Trial by combat?"

"It's how it's done," Damo said once more, and at least half of the people nodded.

"Then let's do it." With a grim smile of invitation, he pivoted to look at each one of them in turn. "And all of you can watch the show."


	14. 3e Hopes: the sun is slowly fading

The immortals followed Methos and Mauvit toward a distant athletic field, out of sight of the school's buildings. "Will that be far enough?" someone behind Methos asked. "Will we be off Holy Ground?"

"There is no Holy Ground," someone else replied, each word spaced for emphasis. "Anywhere."

"But...," the voice protested then gave up. "Oh."

Methos nodded to himself. It took a while to sink in. He lifted his face to the sky, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine. Elena and Amanda were walking on either side of him, Chelle and Cassandra trailed them, and Erianne and Karla came after them, rather like six Valkyries escorting a hero.

Except that Valkyries escorted the souls of the dead to Valhalla, and Methos had no intention of going there. He'd have quite the audience, though. Every single immortal had come. "We should sell tickets," he observed.

"We could take bets, too," Amanda suggested. "Like Robert's doing right now."

"You're not serious," Erianne protested.

"Why not?" Cassandra said. "Reagan was right; we can't ban duels completely. But we could provide a place for them."

"What, like the gladiatorial games in ancient Rome?"

"Yes, very much so." Cassandra seemed pleased by the idea. "Eventually, those who enjoy fighting will kill each other off."

The flip side of any breeding program: culling the herd. Methos planned to do his part of that work today. "What are the odds?"

"Two to one in your favor," Chelle replied.

"Is that all?" Elena sounded scandalized.

"Mauvit's known as a fierce fighter," Chelle said. "Whereas Methos, according to Tribunal records, hasn't taken a head in decades. Even though he's very old, some are thinking he's out of practice, plus he didn't seem very motivated today."

Methos was highly motivated. He liked his head, and he wanted his daughter to live.

At the boundary to the field, he kissed Amanda and Elena, nodded to the others, then drew his sword. Duncan's sword, a gift from six hundred years ago. The katana felt sweet and smooth in his hand. Methos handed the scabbard to Amanda then stepped away from the group. He sniffed the air, tested the breeze, knelt and felt the grass with his hand. Dry, not too tall. The ground was level and smooth. The fierce sun was hot, but it was high. He wouldn't be blinded if he faced the wrong way. All in all, a good day and place for a fight.

Mauvit stood on the far side of the field, with four supporters of her own nearby: Navi, Okhsat and Damo, and Cassie Lathrop, raised as a Puritan in Boston Bay Colony. Mauvit's sword was in her hand.

As was his. Methos kissed the blade, closed his eyes and invoked a name: Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. Then he stepped onto the killing field.

He and Mauvit walked straight toward each other. When they closed the distance, they exchanged blows, not words. The time for talk was over; it was time to kill.

He set about the task with brutal efficiency. He didn't toy with her or torment her—people were already angry with him; he didn't need to add sadist to their list of complaints—but he gave his weaker opponent no chance to recover or regroup. A stab to the thigh to injure and slow, a slice behind the knee to cripple, a cut across the arm to sever the nerves that held the sword.

"If there is a fight, it should be decisive," Karla had said. "And quick. We'll see how unfair this method of 'justice' can be."

Methos was taking that advice to heart. Forty-five seconds in, Mauvit's sword was on the ground. She was down on one knee, breathing in ragged gasps, her right arm dangling, her left arm raised as a shield. The hate in her eyes had been joined by rage and fear and despair, and she cursed him while spitting blood. Methos took hold of the katana's hilt with both hands as he walked around her to choose a good position and the proper angle. Then he cut off her head.

Her body fell sideways. Her head bounced twice then rolled. He grounded the tip of the katana in the earth and braced himself for the Quickening. As he waited, he watched the blood pulsing out of the stump of her neck. Two big spurts in a scarlet fountain spray, then three smaller gushes, and finally only twitches and dribbles in the spreading pool of blood.

The world was drowning in crimson. He could taste blood in the air, hot and salty and sweet. He choked on blood, gagged on it, breathed it in. It oozed out of his nose and eyes and ears. He could feel it in his veins, surging with each heartbeat, scalding him from the inside. His skin glowed white-hot then burned away.

He stood open to the world, every nerve exposed, burning copper hot and tasting fire and dust. Mauvit's Quickening was shrieking in his ears, clawing at his heart, shredding his brain, burrowing its way in—screaming to get out—and he was on fire, he was fire, he was power, glorious and terrifying and exhilarating. It filled him, lifted him, carried him far and high, then finally left him gasping and trembling on the ground, aching all over and tasting blood and desperately wanting more.

He couldn't see, not yet, for a haze of red still flooded his eyes, but he could taste grains of pollen on the air and feel every blade of grass beneath his hands. And he could hear with exquisite precision.

"I've never seen a Quickening before," said one woman at the far edge of the field, sounding disturbed. "Just survived them."

"That wasn't a fight," muttered another. "That was a slaughter. She never stood a chance."

"I won my bet," someone said while another person was swearing, and then the voices blurred into babble then faded into the hiss of the wind and the swish of grass and all Methos tasted was blood.

He rested there a few moments more, until he was back in his body, back to himself. People were approaching, and Methos painstakingly got to his feet, the katana in his hand. The trampled grass was black and sticky with burned blood. Mauvit's body lay in a heap, looking oddly small, as dead bodies tended to.

The immortals formed a circle around him, keeping a respectful distance, but close enough for Methos to see their expressions: various mixtures of somberness, satisfaction, shock, revulsion, lust ... and fear.

Good. "This is what waits for all of us, and for our children," he reminded them, pointing to the blood and the crumpled body and severed head. "Unless we change."

* * *

They didn't, of course, not all of them. They couldn't. Methos hadn't expected them to. But Raven called for a meeting, and they did agree (by majority vote) to keep the Tribunal and to outlaw all fights outside of duels, the same rules they already had.

"We should keep Holy Ground," Cassie said.

"Why?" Lo'siq asked. "If we can't fight each other except in duels, we don't need it."

"Besides," Damo pointed out sourly, "it doesn't mean anything." She'd voted against the Tribunal. "It never did."

"But we mustn't fight on Holy Ground," Cassie insisted.

"I'll fight anywhere I damn well please," Okhsat replied. "And I'll fight anyone at anytime. Like I used to. This whole tribunal is a farce. I always thought so, and now I know so."

"Are you saying," Raven asked carefully, "that you'll try to kill people even if they don't agree to a duel?"

She shrugged. "If I start fighting, so will they. That's agreeing."

"No, it isn't." Aspen's scorn came quick. "That's self-defense, when you're cornered. And threatening someone's family to make them fight, the way Mauvit did, isn't an agreement, either."

"We're immortals." Okhsat stood proud. "We fight. We kill."

"That's what we do," Damo agreed. "That's who we are."

"Not anymore," Raven replied calmly. "And if you won't follow the rules, we'll put you on trial, here and now."

"For what?" Okhsat demanded.

"Intent to commit murder."

Okhsat looked around at the room and apparently found more sternness than sympathy in the faces, for she backed down. "All right. I'll only fight duels."

Methos didn't believe her. Nor, apparently, did others in the room. "Use the truthstone on her," Ji Yoon suggested, and people called out their agreement.

"That thing's another one of those Keeper tricks," Okhsat snarled. "You've got no right—"

"Neither do you!" Aspen yelled in return, and an argument began, with accusations of unfairness and bias, claims to privacy and safety, disagreements about right and wrong. Methos and Amanda kept quiet, as they had agreed, nor did Karla or Chelle or Cassandra get involved. They'd done enough talking today; people needed to work this out for themselves.

"Test us all." Urushan's deep voice cut through the excited babble of voices, and people went quiet and then began to agree. Raven called the room to order, this time taking the chair at the head table and taking charge.

Methos had been hoping she would. After himself and Cassandra, Raven was the oldest immortal there. People respected her as a warrior and liked her as a friend, plus her students and their students had generally turned out well.

Urushan brought out the truthstone, and Raven asked the group, "Do you accept this as a truth-teller?"

Almost all of them had had first-hand experience with it, and almost all of them nodded yes. Okhsat's no vote was ignored. One by one, they each went to the stone, taking an oath to abide by their laws: no targeting pre-immortals and no fighting each other except by mutual consent in a registered duel.

The light stayed steady for Methos as he promised. He had sincere intentions of following each law. Within reason.

Okhsat failed the truth-test, no surprise to anyone, and when Damo was asked, she failed it too. Navi's light wavered, and so did Reagan's. "I'm getting used to the idea," she explained. "But I promise: I won't go fighting people who don't want to fight me." This time her light stayed steady, and people seemed willing to let that go. Navi said much the same.

Which left them with a pair of immortals who refused to follow the rules. Okhsat and Damo ran for the doors, but they were immediately tackled and brought down. They didn't get up; a knife was sticking out of each chest, and they would stay dead until the knives were removed. Karla wiped off her hands. "That'll keep them quiet," Erianne observed. "But not forever. What now?"

"Put them in deep freeze?" came the suggestion. "Or maybe ... maroon them somewhere?"

"I know a planet; it's just been found," Aspen offered. "We could put everyone who doesn't want to stop killing on it, and they could fight it out amongst themselves."

Elena's smile was grim. "So in the end, there will be only one."

"But what do we do with that one?" Raven asked. "And more importantly, what happens to the children born there?"

"One planet for men, one planet for women?" Lo'siq suggested.

Robert shook his head. "Spare planets aren't that easy to find, and besides, a planet isn't a prison. They'd escape somehow, eventually. And then they'd come after us."

"Or our children," Raven added.

That, Methos knew, was the clincher. Raven had four children still alive, two of them pre-immortal and at the school.

"We all know the penalty for forcing a fight," Raven reminded them.

"But they haven't actually done that," Ji Yoon said.

"They used to," Urushan replied. "It's in their chronicles."

"And they plan to again." Aspen pointed at the pair on the floor. "They said so. And I'm not willing to wait until after they kill people before we're allowed to kill them."

And there it was, finally spoken in blunt terms. The other way to cull the herd. Methos listened as the discussion began turning into an argument, until Raven called for a vote. Thirteen voted for execution, and four voted against. All women grew fierce when protecting their children, and these women were immortals who were accustomed to having blood on their hands.

But execution was different than battle. Methos noticed that people avoided looking at the condemned pair.

"So ... who takes their heads?" Ji Yoon asked.

Methos could. He wanted those quickenings. Which meant he did not dare volunteer for the job.

"I don't suppose you have a guillotine on campus, Chelle, like the Tribunal?" Liza sounded more hopeful than sarcastic.

"Is this really what we're going to do?" Reagan demanded before Chelle could answer. "Kill people who won't follow our rules? You know some of the men won't follow along. Are we going to execute them, too?"

Cassandra exchanged a glance with Methos. They would kill as many as they had to. They had to cut out this cancer of the game. He leaned against the back of his chair as the arguing began again, voices overlapping like waves on a lakeshore.

"I'd sleep a lot better," Aspen said. "And I won't always be looking over my shoulder."

"And we won't have to carry our swords with us all the time."

"We'll get sloppy. And weak."

"At least we won't be dead!"

"No? Because if you can't fight and someone else wants to, these 'rules' won't be any help."

"That's why we get rid of those who want to fight like that."

"What if we miss some? Or someone changes his mind? It only takes one."

"And there are three men to every woman. Our odds aren't good."

"That's not chance, you know. Men are bigger and stronger, and that makes a difference, no matter how good with a blade you are."

Glances, either wary or unfriendly, came his way, and Methos studiously examined the grain of wood in the floor.

"That difference," Raven said firmly, "is one reason we need laws, just like every other community."

"We're not a community." Navi was standing with her back against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, not far from the door.

"But we could be," Raven said. "Now that we know we're not lone wolves."

Elena set down her chair with a thump. "We have cubs." She looked at Damo and Okhsat, still dead on the floor. "And someday, those two will try to hunt them down and kill them." Elena lifted her head and tossed back her mane of thick black hair. Her lips pulled back in a fearsome smile, showing white teeth. "I protect my family."

Methos smiled to himself. She truly was a magnificent alpha bitch.

"Are you saying you want to be the one to execute them?" Lo'siq asked.

"I don't think any of us should execute them. That's why I voted no. But I would fight them."

"So would I," countered Ji Yoon. "You're not the only one who wants the quickening."

Elena rolled her eyes in exasperation. "That's not—"

"No?"

Her challenge was belligerent enough and Elena was irritated enough that Methos wondered if the two women might decide to fight each other first, but then Robert suggested, "We could draw lots."

"There's no need," Chelle finally cut in. "We do have a guillotine."

Navi scoffed with bitter laughter. "You are unbelievable."

"We are prepared," Chelle corrected. "Hunters come to these schools."

"I've no love for those two," Reagan said, "but I won't be a part of this execution."

"Nor will I," Navi said.

"I will," Aspen said, coming forward. "I've been a member of the Tribunal for six centuries. We help the helpless. We stop the slaughter."

Navi switched from scoff to sneer. "By killing."

Aspen shrugged. "Like Okhsat and Damo said: we're immortal. It's what we do."

"So that's the new slogan?" Reagan asked. "Join us or die?"

It did sound drastic, put that way. But as Methos had told Cassandra two years ago, stopping the Game was an all or nothing proposition.

"It results in less killing than does 'There can be only one'," Ji Yoon replied. "And you had no problem with that." She looked at the other thirteen who had voted yes. "Ready?"

A somber crew worked silently: tranquilizing, trussing, transporting. It took time. The guillotine was in a well-built underground chamber a kilometer from the school, so that the quickening would dissipate and no one could scavenge the soul.

After they secured Okhsat to the plank, Erianne asked, "Should we wait? Until after she wakes up?"

"She's not one to pray," Aspen said. "And she won't like looking up at that." Above them, the edge of the slanted blade gleamed silver in the gloom.

They left her there, tied and helpless. Back in the control room, Raven pushed the button that released the blade. Then they made the trek with Damo. Aspen pushed the button that time.

As was the tradition, Aspen and Raven did the clean up and the burial. Methos joined them, and they took care of Mauvit's body as well. To the victor belonged the spoils, to the executioner belonged the duty. Killers had to face—up close and personal—what they had done.

Otherwise, killing was just too much fun.

Methos had no appetite that evening, and he went to bed early.

* * *

The next day, the morning meal was sparsely attended; only eleven had gathered in the dining hall. "Elena, Lo'siq, and Liza and their families went riding," Chelle reported as Methos took the chair between her and Amanda. Robert was on Amanda's other side. At the other two chairs at the table, Karla was absorbed in peeling a bava fruit with a very sharp knife, and Cassandra had neatly segmented an orange and appeared to be contemplating whether or not to eat.

Aspen leaned over from the other table to say, "Cassie, Reagan, and Navi left the school last night."

"Did you get a chance to talk with them first?" Methos asked Cassandra.

She glanced up from her contemplation of the orange. "Karla and I both did."

Exit interviews accomplished then, during which memories were edited and attitudes adjusted. Dangers reduced. Methos poured himself juice. Amanda handed him the platter of fried eggs. Cassandra picked up a segment of orange.

"That leaves only fourteen immortals," Ji Yoon noted.

"Immortals started with twelve, all those years ago," Erianne said, cheery as a chipmunk.

"Yeah, but immortals weren't hell-bent on trying to kill each other for the first fifteen hundred years," Aspen pointed out, none too helpfully.

"Nor did they know about the children," Urushan put in smoothly. "We will be taking care of our young."

Easier said than done. Methos didn't like it here. The school was too exposed. He was too exposed. He stabbed at the egg on his plate then watched as the orange yolk began to send delicate tendrils into the dark toast.

"More will join us, once they know." Raven sounded very sure.

Methos was equally sure that some would—like Mauvit—want to kill him for starting the Game. He'd beaten her, but it wouldn't always be that easy and it was never a sure thing. Preventive measures were called for.

"Then that's next." Robert leaned back in his chair. "Tell the secrets to the Tribunal and all the other immortals: how we started, how we're born, that there is no Prize."

Cassandra nodded. "It's the only way to stop the Game."

Methos placed the edge of his fork to block the viscous flow. The liquid stopped but then ran along the silver edge.

Amanda placed her hand upon his thigh then smiled when he turned to her. "We will stop it, Methos."

"No matter how many we have to kill."

She nodded, not smiling now. "However many are left, it will still be more than one."

Methos made a note to remind himself of that—each and every time he had to kill.

* * *

**Sunday, Spring 6, 561 PE, Sisterhood Chapter House, Geseret**

"Cloudrise School burning. No survivors."

Giorgis read aloud that message from Field Watcher Pelan, and the other two Watchers in the archive room looked up in surprise.

"No survivors?" questioned Maili. "That can't be right. They have six immortals on staff, and more than twenty preimmortals."

Tristiz chimed in. "Fire doesn't kill immortals."

* * *

But swords did, and when Giorgis arrived at the school the next morning, Pelan showed her the killing ground. The reek of wet ash and burned meat caught at the back of the throat, and part of the roofless building still smoldered. At first, Giorgis saw only a jumble of malformed metal and charred bones. Then, she noticed the curves and flat sections of bone fragments scattered on the floor: pieces of skulls.

"Some people think skulls explode because of steam from boiling brains," Pelan mentioned. "But that's not true. The steam can escape through all the holes: nasal cavity, eye sockets, and the like. Skulls just get brittle from the heat, and then things fall on them, and they shatter."

Skulls might shatter. They did not, however, gather themselves into a pile in a corner, small ones interspaced with large ones. And bodies did not tie themselves upright and immobile to chairs, so that necks were easy to slice through.

"Who?" Giorgis asked, turning away and trying to breathe without tasting or smelling the air.

"There's no DNA left, not with that heat. Methos and Karla just went off planet, so it's not them. Those still at the school were Cassandra, Urushan, Amanda, Michelle Webster, Rav—"

"No." The list of the dead could wait. "Who took their heads?"

Pelan handed her a small square of paper. "He left a calling card."

It read simply, "Ruten."

"How?" the other Watchers wanted to know when Giorgis finally returned to the archive room of the Chapterhouse. "How did he—"

"Poison gas in the ventilation system," Giorgis said.

"But the security system—"

"A bribe to one of the mortal workers, along with a sad story about an ex-wife who took his child." She set her bag on a tabletop and started to remove stacks of paper, all neatly labeled and bound. "He had it planned."

"How many dead?" Tristiz asked.

"Eight adults." Giorgis stared at nothing, seeing it all again. "Twenty-six children."

"Thirty-four?" Maili asked in surprised horror. "How could one person take all those quickenings?"

"There were three, actually—Ruten, Handon Gris, and Elchin Zadeh—working together." Giorgis didn't want to even look at the reports she and Pelan had written, one for each of the dead immortals and the children, and another three for their killers. "And they took their time."

Watchers began looking through the stack of reports, and even Tribune Hagar came out from her office to read. Maili started writing the names of the dead on the list posted on the wall.

Giorgis stared at the names but couldn't decipher them. The black letters didn't create words anymore. The characters stood separate, disconnected, in straight rows. A few tall, more short, like adults laid out alongside tiny bodies, black and bristly and burned, and the occasional dots of punctuation scattered here and there, like severed heads.

All in gray and black, like ash and soot.

"What about the talismans?" Tribune Hagar wanted to know.

"Smashed, burned, and broken. He hated the Tribunal, and I think he was afraid of their talismans."

The tribune nodded. "With good reason."

"They're targeting women," noted Maili, stepping back from her work.

"Ruten always has," Tribune Hagar said. "In part because they were weaker opponents, in part because he enjoyed it. Now that he knows immortals can have children..."

"He's decided to eliminate the competition before it can be born," Giorgis finished grimly.

Tribune Hagar nodded. "He and Gris and Zadeh won't be the only ones doing that." She sighed as she closed the file, then rubbed the long scar on her cheek before opening her eyes. "This is why, three centuries ago when a Watcher discovered immortals gave birth, the High Tribune of the Watchers decided that information must be kept completely secret, even from Watchers. Because what we know..."

"...Immortals can find out," the other Watchers in the room finished. That saying had been drummed into all students at the Watcher academy.

"Did the Sisterhood know?" Maili asked the tribune.

"Only one other on the Council of Nine. We kept it secret all these years..." She sighed once more then shrugged, a submission to fate. "Immortals always have been their own doom."

* * *

As the months went by and the reports came in, Giorgis watched the list of the dead grow longer. Handon Gris tracked down Regan Cole and Cassie Lathrop but then made the mistake of going after Karla, who took his head. Elchin Zadeh killed Bastiri then fell to Methos, who immediately began hunting Ruten: the last of the three killers in the Cloudrise Massacre.

The chase took two years, and Ruten took out Umeado, Navi, Ji Yoon, and Elena Duran before Methos finally hunted him down in Ecuadoria on Sol III.

By then, Immortals had abandoned their tribunal in favor of vengeance and self-preservation, Karla was dead, and Methos had developed a taste for blood.

"He's going after anyone and everyone," Maili marveled as she wrote Kit O'Brady's name on Methos's list of kills, right after Phan Huy and Robert de Valincourt's. "He's like a madman."

Or a Horseman, Giorgis might have said, but didn't. It didn't matter now.

Maili had her own idea. "Ever since his daughter was killed, he doesn't care."

Or he cared too much. Or maybe he was just bored, or maybe he had made a calculated decision to eliminate all threats. Giorgis wasn't sure. Methos always had been a puzzle.

Two days later, young Sister Viyar sought out Giorgis. "I've just arrived on Geseret," Viyar said. "Sister Cassandra was very kind to me back on Earth, and I haven't seen her in five years. Could you tell me where she is?"

Giorgis told Viyar the sad news, though without mentioning beheadings. "There was a gas explosion at the school. Everyone was killed."

"You're certain?" Viyar asked, dismay and surprise on her face.

"Yes." Giorgis still dreamed of burnt bones.

"It's just..." Viyar shook her head rapidly, the surprise blurring into confusion. "I truly thought I would see Sister Cassandra again."

"I'm sorry," Giorgis said, the too familiar ache now merely wistfulness. "She's gone."

Three weeks later, Lo'siq was gone, too. The last of the female immortals had lost her head. "Only twenty-three men left now," Maili announced, finishing another list. "No preimmortals that we know of." She sat down and stared at the names on the wall. "So that's it. Immortals will go extinct."

"Eventually," Giorgis agreed, "but they could last for centuries."

"The Watchers won't." Tribune Hagar spoke up from behind her desk. "The Sisterhood is cutting our funding this year."

"Again?" Maili said with dismay. "By how much?"

"All of it."

"But..." Maili waved her hand at the all the files and reports on the shelves that lined the walls, "...all this history, all this..."

"Will go to the archives," the tribune replied. "It won't be lost."

"What about the Field Watchers?"

"They'll continue, but the Sisterhood has other priorities now, and so should the two of you. I'll stay on for a year or so to tidy up, but you're both young; you can still have excellent careers."

Giorgis and Maili looked at each other, two Watchers in a dusty basement room, a dead end in a too-quiet building. Everyone else had transferred out over the past few years.

"Maybe espionage for me," Maili said thoughtfully. "Didn't you say you wanted to join the Guardians, Giorgis?"

"Yes, nearly twenty years ago, when I was fifteen. Now..." Giorgis wasn't sure. She'd been recruited into the Watchers at nineteen, after watching someone come back to life.

"Think about it and let me know," Tribune Hagar offered. "I'll recommend you."

"Thank you," Giorgis said. Backing from one of the Nine Councilors would definitely help. "But what about you?"

"I've eighty-four years, Sisters. The Game is done, there is no Prize, and all the Immortals I've watched are dead." Her desk was clear, yet so were her eyes. "When I'm done here, I'm going to leave Geseret and retire."

"Where will you go?"

"Oh..." She smiled just enough so that the ancient scar across her cheek caught the light. "Some place warm."

* * *

**Seven years later**

"It's warm today, Hagar. Would you like to sit outside?"

"Yes, let's," she answered, closing her eyes against the glare as her wheelchair went onto the porch and into the garden. The sunshine felt good on her face, and the touch of her lover's hand in her own was warm and good, too. "I'm glad we've had these past four years together," Hagar said. "At the end."

"So am I."

"The beginning was good, too," Hagar remembered. "Even though I did get this scar. And the middle..." She opened her eyes and smiled at her lover, still as gorgeous as the day they had first met, sixty-eight years ago. "That was hot."

The grin was still just as wickedly cheerful. "And good."

"Oh, yes," Hagar agreed, trying to match that grin. But she was tired; she tired so easily now. She rested for a bit in the sunshine. It would be good to sleep and then to die. Even her bones ached now. She was ready. It was time. But first, she needed to know. "Is the plan still working?"

"'Yes, Hagar. Thanks to you."

"I didn't do much, really. Lied to some people. Altered some reports."

"And let your memory be wiped with the Orb."

"Ah, yes, I'd forgotten." They smiled together at that old joke. They'd needed to convince the Sisterhood's psychics that all the female immortals were dead. Hagar had believed it herself, and she'd wept and grieved. But the elaborate ruse had worked. The Watchers were disbanded, the Sisterhood was convinced, and the immortals were free. "How many immortals are here in the colony now?"

"Fifty-four, plus thirty-two children. Methos and Amanda had another boy, and Chelle and Robert had a girl."

"I'm glad." Hagar had always dreaded the death reports, and when Mother Laaj had begun talking to the Council of "hastening the inevitable end," Hagar had decided to help the immortals survive. She'd hoped they might have their own families; she'd never imagined they'd settle their own world. That key to the orb had changed everything. "And your son?"

"Growing tall."

"Good." Hagar closed her eyes and was surprised by a kiss, warm and sweet upon her lips.

The familiar smile and tender gaze greeted her. The brightness of tears was new. "I love you, Hagar."

Hagar smiled back, feeling nothing but good everywhere. "I love you, too, Karla."

Everyone in the colony came to Hagar's funeral. Karla lit the pyre. As Erianne gave a eulogy, Cassandra held hands with her daughter, Shariade, now a young woman of twenty-one years.

"Mother," Shariade began as they walked down the hill, and by that one word, Cassandra knew it was serious, for Shariade usually called her by name.

"Mother," Shariade said, "I've decided when I want to die."


	15. Epilogue - The Beginning

_**Seek the wisdom of the children**_

* * *

**Autumn 5, 574 PE— Immortal Colony**

* * *

"I'm ready, Mother," Shariade announced to Cassandra early one morning during harvest time. "To die."

Cassandra paused for only a second in shelling beans. She had long known this day would come, but she hadn't been eager for it. "You are twenty-five," Cassandra noted, running her thumb along the seam of the pod and splitting it open with a crackling sound. "It's a good age."

"I'd like to do the ceremony at Winter's Day," Shariade continued.

Her brother Duncan's birthday. "It will be beautiful that time of year." No snow, not at this latitude on this planet, but with cool days and starry skies.

"I've asked Karla to help me cross over, and she agreed."

With a slow slide of her thumb, Cassandra stripped the beans from the pod. Euphemisms were helpful, even though they were lies. Because in truth, Shariade had asked Karla to kill her, and Karla had said yes.

"Is that all right?" Shariade sounded concerned. "I want you there, of course, but I didn't think you would want to—"

"No," Cassandra said swiftly. "You're right. I'll be there and I'll hold your hand, but I'd rather not be the one to hold the blade."

Shariade laughed in surprise. "That's exactly what Methos said when I asked him."

"Did he," Cassandra murmured. Beneath her fingers, small white beans popped off their fragile stems, one after another after another, gathering in a heap at the bottom of the bowl.

"The blade part, not the holding hand part," Shariade explained.

"I see." Cassandra moved on. "Karla will do a wonderful job." Cassandra smiled up at her lovely daughter. "We'll have a party after you revive. What are you going to wear?"

* * *

"I heard Shariade has decided to cross over," Aspen said that afternoon as they gathered greens and vegetables for the evening meal. "That's great news!"

Cassandra had been accepting congratulations all day. "Yes." She tugged a dark orange carrot from the warm soil.

"Duncan's youngest sister," Erianne said with a wondering smile. "She doesn't look anything like him. Or you."

Chelle peered at them from between the pepper plants nearby. "Mutations and epigenetics," she explained. "Immortals have high incidences of both, so that we increase our variety and blend in with the surrounding population."

"Right," Erianne said. "I remember that class now." Her hands were busy, and her basket of lettuce leaves was nearly full.

Aspen was brushing dirt clods from the carrots. "Cassandra, how many children did you and Connor have together?"

Cassandra had become accustomed to the abiding—and intrusive—curiosity about the bloodlines. But why should they hide? "Nine confirmed. Another eight possible." Duncan had been the oldest; Shariade was the youngest. And the last.

Erianne blinked. "That's a lot."

"Cassandra and Connor were partners for a thousand years," Chelle reminded the other two.

"Off and on," Cassandra demurred, because Connor and Chelle had been partners, too. They'd had four children, and their remaining son had joined the colony.

"Who fathered your other children?" Aspen asked Cassandra. "As far as you know."

"As far as I know," Cassandra agreed, because all these conversations started out that way. She'd checked the Watcher chronicles from 1996, with hope for that tryst with Duncan in June and with dread for the rapes by the Horsemen in November, and found nothing, but the Chronicles were neither perfect nor complete. They didn't exist at all for her first five hundred years. So as far as she knew... "None by Methos; I was too new an Immortal to be fertile." Once again, Cassandra gave thanks to the Goddess for that blessing. "Roland sired eight children on me, but they all died young. Ramirez and I had five children, three of whom had children of their own."

"One of them was my grandmother," Erianne said cheerfully. "Which makes Duncan MacLeod my first cousin once removed."

"And Connor MacLeod was your great-uncle," Chelle noted.

But Aspen, not content to dig up only carrots, was still digging at another part of the family tree. "Is that it, Cassandra? Just those three fathers?"

"Yes."

"Huh."

"Is that so strange?" Cassandra asked.

"Just the odds. I mean, lots and lots by those three blokes and none by all the other immortals."

Chelle poked her head between the pepper plants. "Actually, Aspen, if you have sex a thousand times with one man, the odds are pretty good you'll get pregnant by him more than once. But if you have sex once with ten different men each, you're not that likely to have ten children by ten different fathers."

"Yes," Cassandra agreed. "Or five men, in my case."

"In four thousand years, you've had sex with only five other immortals?" Aspen asked. "And only once with each of them?"

"One night," Cassandra clarified then thought back through the years. "And the morning after." Or the afternoon, in the case of the Horsemen, though given Silas's proclivities, children had not been a possibility. "So a few times with each of those five, and no children from any of them. As far as I know."

Aspen sat back on her heels, a carrot held by its greens dangling from one hand. "Huh."

Cassandra took it from her and flicked the dirt clods from the fleshy orange tuber. "You seem surprised."

"Yeah, I am. You were in the Sisterhood most of those four millennia, right? They're not exactly monogamous. They sure as hell aren't chaste."

"Why should they be?"

"No reason," Aspen quickly replied. "I just thought you would have had more men."

Cassandra dropped that last carrot in the basket and brushed the dirt from her hands. "I've had more than enough men. Eight of them happened to be immortal. The rest weren't."

Aspen still wasn't done with impertinence. "How many was that?"

Once, in a morbid fit of curiosity, Cassandra had done the math. And since Aspen really wanted to know: "About a million."

The other women froze. "Jesus Christ," Aspen breathed.

"He wasn't one of them," Cassandra informed her briskly, causing Chelle to snort out from her nose.

"How…?" Erianne said. "I mean…"

"I often worked as a whore," Cassandra told the younger women. "Ten men a day adds up over the centuries. Twenty or thirty a day, when the ships come in or the troops are in town."

"Jesus Christ." Aspen muttered it this time.

Cassandra calmly picked up her basket and headed to the kitchen to prepare the salad for the communal meal.

* * *

The next day, however, after being asked to meet with the genetics board, Cassandra found it difficult to remain calm.

With a stylus, Gregor tapped the thick pile of papers that mapped the family tree. "The mutations help with variety, but we still have a very limited gene pool, with a lot of inbreeding. We need to increase variety through new pairings. Lines that have never crossed before." Then he looked at Cassandra. So did Lo'siq and Derek.

Cassandra met that combined onslaught of expectation with placid silence. She did want children, but at the right time. Establishing this new colony an on new world kept her busy, as did spending time with Shariade, and Cassandra planned on being a true mother to all the children she might have.

"You're the oldest female immortal here, Cassandra," Derek said, as if she needed reminding. "We need your genes."

"My age means you already have my genes," Cassandra pointed out. "Almost everyone in the colony—including you and Lo'siq—are my descendants."

"Yes," Lo'siq agreed, "but all your descendants come through the Ramirez line, and most of them are also from the MacLeod lines." She looked at the pile of papers, quite a few of which bore green color codes to mark that paternal line. "None of those is exactly uncommon."

Derek shook his head in rueful admiration. "They did love the ladies."

And the ladies had loved them. Cassandra had loved all three. The sweetness of memory was still pierced by sorrow, though the cutting edge was no longer so keen.

"That's the problem," Lo'siq said. "A few gene patterns dominate. We need to encourage those that are rare."

"And increase variety," Gregor repeated. "Different partners."

Cassandra definitely wasn't ready for that. "Has Chelle succeeded with _in vitro_ fertilization yet?"

"No, in fact she's determined it's not possible," Gregor answered. "Sperm donation won't work, either, because the quickening energy from both mother and father is needed to make the zygote form. That's why we're sterile with mortals."

Lo'siq shrugged. "So, we have to make babies the old-fashioned way. At least we don't have to be pregnant more than a day, and we don't remember the birth—or the babies. Someone else can raise them."

Cassandra was never going to abandon another child.

Derek pulled out a folder. "Gregor and I put together lists of recommended partners for those lines we want to encourage, and Lo'siq determined the number of children they should have to optimize variety for the colony."

Cassandra's paper was neatly labeled at the top her with her name, followed by five rows of smaller type. She knew four of the five men listed and didn't like two of them. The first name on the list she knew too well.

"Pairing up with you to produce viable offspring—four of them—was not my idea," Methos told her the next day in the stable.

Cassandra slid the tines of the rake under the pile of manure. "I know. Though it's obvious, if you think about it." She simply had not wanted to think about it. "I'm surprised they didn't suggest it sooner."

"Lo'siq told me she's been expecting us to pair up on our own."

Cassandra stopped with a load balanced in the rake to look at him.

"Since you and I spend a lot of time together," Methos explained. "And we are obviously 'such good friends'."

Cassandra tossed the clumps into the bucket then stood the rake on end, tines down, holding onto the handle as she leaned. "We are friends. I think."

"Yes." Methos's eyes gleamed with gold. "I think so, too."

"But to be more than that..." Cassandra turned back to her chore and chivvied one errant clump back onto the rake then dropped that in the bucket, too. "I'm not ready, Methos."

"Because of Connor?"

He sounded surprised, and she supposed he had reason. Connor had been dead nearly twenty years. Duncan had been gone longer, and Methos and Amanda hadn't wasted any time in consoling each other in bed. But people grieved in different ways, and Cassandra did not use sex as a solace. "In part," she said. "And in part because I've been waiting for Shariade to cross over before I became a mother to an infant. But mostly because I think of you as a friend, not a lover."

"I understand." He shrugged. "We're immortal. There's time."

She would not offer false hope. "Going from friend to lover can happen, but with you..." Methos looked away, and Cassandra watched the lines of his throat go tight, as if with remembered pain.

"I understand," he said again.

"I know." If he didn't, she couldn't have been his friend.

He helped her carry the bucket to the dung heap and then put out hay and water for the donkeys. As they left the stable, he said, "If you ever are ready, Cassandra, I'd very much like the chance to show you..."

Methos trailed off, and he seemed to regret having started this sentence, so she offered him humor as an escape. "One of Amanda's techniques?"

His laughter brought the gold back to his eyes, but he went serious before he told her: "How much I've changed."

* * *

"What was your first death like, Mother?" Shariade had asked, soon after they had moved to the Immortal colony and told the children what they were.

"Terrifying." Cassandra would not share that story with her daughter, not yet, perhaps never. "I couldn't quite believe it was happening." She hadn't believed her revival, either, and she would have preferred to stay dead.

"Was your death painful?"

"Only briefly." The Horsemen had been skilled at killing. Sometimes that meant quick efficiency; sometimes it meant excruciatingly slow deaths.

"How did it happen?"

"I was stabbed by a sword, when my village was raided. Your father's first death was also by sword, in a battle."

"Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod." Shariade had rolled out the name with the rhythm of a war drum. "I wish I could have known him."

"So do I, love." Cassandra had leaned forward to kiss the top of their daughter's head. "I wish he could have known you." Connor would have adored Shariade when she was a baby, played with her as child, taught her as a teen ... loved her as a daughter.

"Your father would be proud of you today, Shariade, as you become an immortal." Standing behind Shariade as she sat on a stool, Cassandra once again kissed the top of her daughter's head before returning to combing the thick mass of dark curls.

Shariade nodded and smiled, but in the mirror, her eyes showed narrow with tension, and in her lap, her fingers held on to each other tightly.

Chelle looked up from the corner of the bedroom. "Karla is practiced," Chelle reassured Shariade. "It will be quick."

Shariade summoned a brave and cheerful smile. "At least I know what's happening. That helps, doesn't it?"

"Definitely," Chelle agreed. "After my first death, I woke up naked in a morgue, locked inside one of the freezer boxes. Who knows how long I would have been in there if Duncan hadn't come to get me out. And then he explained what we were, so I knew about Immortals the first day. He didn't find out for three years."

"When Connor told him, as Ramirez had told him, as his teacher had told him," Shariade recited. She'd heard that story many times. "But they had most of it wrong. They didn't know the Prize didn't exist and so the Game was pointless." Shariade knew the immortal origin story, too; all the children in the colony did. She added cheerfully, "They didn't even know we could have babies."

Chelle grinned. "Picked the father of your first-born yet?"

"Still considering," Shariade replied archly. "Of course, I won't be fertile for about a decade, so I have time. Who have you picked to father your next child, Mother?"

Cassandra ignored Chelle's look of keen interest and used Shariade's reply: "Still considering." She began braiding Shariade's hair.

"I think you and Methos should have some children," Shariade said, "Chelle does, too."

"Do you," Cassandra murmured, with a librarian-worthy look of disapproval.

Chelle ignored it. "Amanda's branching out. Methos should, too. And so should you."

"Genetics isn't everything," Cassandra said.

"Of course not," Shariade agreed. "You and Methos have age in common. I know you're both good parents. And you already like each other."

"We're friends," Cassandra explained.

"Oh, please, Mother." Shariade rolled her eyes. "You and Methos are so much more than friends."

That was the precisely the problem.

"And one more thing," Shariade continued. "He makes you laugh."

Connor had known how to do that, and so had Ramirez and her mortal husbands. Cassandra had always treasured joy. She put the final pin into Shariade's braided hair and announced, "I'm done."

"So, Shariade," Chelle said, getting to her feet, "ready to die?"

As had become a tradition in the last fifteen years, the crossing over ceremony took place in the gardens with friends and family in attendance. Shariade hugged everyone then disrobed and lay down on a woven pallet on the ground. Cassandra held her hand and sang to her, and Karla slid the knife in, swift and sure.

Shariade's eyes darkened as she clutched convulsively at Cassandra's hand and gasped in shock and pain. A trembling breath and a final exhale, then her grip loosened, and she died.

Cassandra gently closed Shariade's eyes, washed the wound, and then pulled a blanket over her. Now they waited.

The bonfire was lit, drink passed around, and people told stories: some of Shariade, some of their own crossing over. Methos lounged with his back against a tree, suffering toddlers to crawl over him with the magnificent patience of a lion among his pride.

Karla cleaned the killing blade.

Tauseen, now a reserved young man of twenty-four, asked, "Why do we use a knife?"

"Raven started that tradition among us here, when her eldest crossed over," Methos explained.

"I've always used a knife for this." Karla's fingers slid along the blade with a lover's touch.

"How many have you brought over?"

"Four here, and eight in centuries past. Mostly my students."

"Why not use poison?" he asked.

"It's difficult to get the dosage right," Cassandra replied. "Especially when working from plants instead of from chemicals in a laboratory."

Karla held her blade up to the firelight. "A knife is quick and clean, and stab wounds heal faster than bullet wounds."

One of the boys grimaced in distaste. "It's still messy."

Chelle nodded. "That's why we take off the clothes and do it outside."

Cassandra approved of the blade. A rite of passage should not be easy, and rebirth—like birth—came with blood and pain.

And, of course, a celebration when the work was done. Shariade revived after about an hour to cheers and applause from the waiting crowd. Cassandra was once more holding her hand. "Welcome back," Cassandra said.

Shariade laughed aloud and scrambled to her feet. This time she kissed the top of Cassandra's head. Motherhood was over; they would be sisters now.

Friends came and helped Shariade to dress. The tight, red bodice buttoned from collarbone to breastbone, then fell off to the sides in pleats to reveal all the subtle curves of her abdomen. The dark red belt dipped in a V also, both front and back. The black strips of skirt, fastened low around the hips, hung short in front and long enough in the back to touch her heels. When Shariade walked, the strips coiled snake-like between her thighs.

"Exquisite," Amanda declared with an approving nod.

"Of course it is," Shariade said. "You designed it!" She twirled so that the black strands flared out around her, revealing even more skin, and she laughed again. Shariade had claimed her birthright: eternal youth and beauty, a chance to live forever. "Come one, everyone!" she called. "Let's dance!"

The young people took off at a run for the dancing hall. Amanda took her children by the hands and followed at the toddler's quickest pace.

Cassandra and Methos had the fire to themselves. Neither spoke, though Methos did stand and stretch then leave the tree to come closer to the warmth. They stood next to each other and watched the ancient stars in their unfamiliar constellations and the ever-changing flames in their familiar dance. Sparks lifted up to heaven, and the smoke curled around the glowing embers.

When the first moon rose, Cassandra offered her hand to Methos. He bowed to her as he took it, and he kissed her palm. Where his lips had touched, her skin burned.

Then they sat together, shoulder leaning into shoulder, heads inclined and fingers entwined. The stars paraded in their great wheel. When the second moon rose, Cassandra kissed him. In the ancient light of the fire, his eyes gleamed gold, just as they had ages ago.

But on this world of changes and beginnings, everything else between them was new.

* * *

Three months later, their first child was born. Cassandra did not remember, but she believed. In the golden light of the afternoon sun sat Methos, holding a newborn in his arms and staring with amazed tenderness at their son. Talin, his daughter by Amanda, leaned against Methos's side and made faces at her new baby brother. Her other two brothers lay sprawled on the floor at Methos's feet, piling little rocks into pyramids.

Ages ago, Cassandra could never have imagined such a happy domestic scene. Methos had been one of the four Horsemen, Death incarnate, slaughtering and burning and destroying. And now, four thousand years later, he was tamed.

So was she. Not by pain or torture or death, but by love.

"Changed indeed," Cassandra murmured, and she went to join their family.

* * *

_**Thank you for reading! The Hope Saga will be concluded in **_**Hope Triumphant V: Phoenix**


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